


adventure finds me (in the last place she expects it)

by DrivenByNostalgia09



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29714700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrivenByNostalgia09/pseuds/DrivenByNostalgia09
Summary: There are lessons to be learned everywhere Lara Croft steps foot. She learns to trust her instincts, the difference between sacrifice and loss, that her father was right, and that she's never really understood what it means to let herself want.ORA Lara Croft character study where we take an in depth look at her thoughts through the events of the games (and there's a lot more Sam Nishimura than Lara would care to admit).
Relationships: Lara Croft/Samantha Nishimura
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	1. University College London (where she learns she's broken)

Lara is beat. There's a large part of her that knows it's time to go home, to not spend another night tiring herself out to the point of exhaustion. But, she reasons with herself, what other choice does she have? If she goes home now, her thoughts will haunt her until the early morning. No, she needs this; she needs her muscles to ache, needs her thoughts to slow down and stop, needs for just  _ one goddamn night _ for her world to stop spinning.

All she wants is to be able to lie down and fall asleep without spiraling into an endless pool of what-ifs. 

It happens every year, but this year the ache feels almost too much to bear and it nearly drives Lara to the brink of insanity every night when she can’t bring herself to fight the overwhelming grief that overtakes her body.

So she keeps pushing. And when her arms can't handle the weight anymore, she hops on a treadmill and runs. She listens to the cheesy music playing over the gym speakers, to the whirring of the machine beneath her feet. All she has to do is keep going. Keep moving. She feels the exhaustion begin to kick in, but by then she had already lost all track of time. 

Maybe just a little more, she keeps telling herself—a mantra that fills her head until she's hypnotized by the sound of her heavy steps hitting the cheap treadmill. 

_ Right, left, right, left. _

_ Right. _

_ Left. _

_ Right. _

_ Left. _

"This is the fourth night in a row you've done this," a voice she recognizes all too well pulls her back to reality and she loses her footing. She slams down the stop button and she immediately begins to feel her body ache more than it ever had before. As jarring as the sudden ache feels, it's a strangely comforting feeling.

She hopes that means she'll sleep through the night, at least.

"Sam," is all she can manage to say in between breaths. "How...how," she tries to stammer out a question, not even completely sure of what she wants to ask. She desperately reaches for her bottle of water only to groan when she discovers it's empty and realizes just how parched she feels, her mouth uncomfortably dry. Her eyes shut tightly, her pulse still unbearably quick from her, what was beginning to feel like, irresponsible run. It's all too much and all she can do is shut her eyes tightly as she grips tightly onto the sides of the treadmill, trying to steady her breathing as much as possible.

"How did I find you?" Sam finishes her question for her before handing over her own bottle of water, seeing her friend's obvious distress. Lara greedily drinks from the bottle welcoming the convenient distraction from actually confronting Sam. "Wasn't that hard, sweetie," she laughs, "you only leave our place for either work, class, to study, or to work out."

Lara tries to shake off the affectionate nickname, tries to ignore how much she absolutely loves it. She doesn’t want to deal with the weird flutter that happens at Sam’s undivided attention on her. Instead, she simply hands her flatmate her water bottle back and begins to pack up, effectively ignoring Sam's stare of concern. 

"Come on, Lara," Sam tries again, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder to get her to stop moving. "Look, I'm sorry if I'm crossing any boundaries here, but I was just worried about you."

Lara is starting to realize that this happens all too frequently with Sam, where she has to quell how quickly her heart will fill to the brim with simple touches or phrases. She isn't sure how to handle such a rush of emotions, how to savor the good feelings before she inevitably pushes them away. Maybe it’s all she knows how to do now—push people away.

She takes a deep breath and turns around to face her concerned flatmate.

"Sorry," Lara tells her, cringing at the insincerity of her own apology, but the patient look on Sam's face encourages her to continue. "I've been trying to figure things out. I don't want to drag you down this hole with me, Sam." It’s mostly the truth, Lara tells herself. It’s not technically a lie, but it’s also not much of anything in the first place. 

Sam takes a step forward, her eyes never leaving Lara's, and gently brushes a strand of hair away from her face, fingertips just barely brushing against her cheek.

And there it is again, the rush. It's like a drug, the way she's addicted to these small intimacies. In another lifetime, she might've leaned into the touch a little more, might've gripped her hand in her own and held it there, might’ve taken the time to relish in the small pieces of comfort.

In  _ this _ lifetime, she lets the small moment pass, lets herself bury the feeling again and again until she can pretend it was never there in the first place.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but you've gotta at least start pacing yourself here. You've been coming back on the verge of collapsing the past four nights."

"That was kind of the point," Lara shrugs. "It helps me sleep." It isn't like she doesn't know what she’s doing isn't healthy. This is just  _ easier. _ Maybe it isn't the best thing to do for herself in the long term, but the patterns are just so easy to fall into. It’s one of the few comforts she allows herself. The pain feels safe.

It’s sick, and she knows it, but she doesn't have the strength to give it up.

"Lara…"

"I know, I know, you don't have to scold me twice," she chuckles, trying to make light of the situation. "No promises, but I'll try, okay?" Lara isn’t very confident that her efforts will lead anywhere, but she knows she needs to say something to ease the worry in her friend. It’s obvious to the both of them that it’s not very reassuring.

"Alright," Sam sighs, and Lara doesn’t know if she’s relieved or disappointed that Sam doesn’t push any further—that Sam doesn’t have the magic words to make it all go away. 

There’s an awkward moment of silence between the two, and it’s the last thing Lara wants to happen. Sam is one of the best things to happen to her in a long time. Lara had been without proper company in such a long time, how is she supposed to keep the ones she cared about close to her? She doesn’t want these awkward moments to become the norm, but she also has no clue how to remedy it.

It's as if someone had cursed her to have everyone she'd ever care about to leave her. She wants to reach out and say something,  _ do _ something, to make it all better, to make sure that Sam doesn’t ever have to leave her side. 

They had only been friends for two years—and flatmates for six months out of those two years—but Lara doesn’t like to entertain the idea that she would ever lose Sam from her life. She knows it’s a possibility, but the thought of it hurts too much.

Lara doesn’t want to hurt anymore.

"Mind giving me a ride home?" Lara asks, a little too hopeful that it'd be the stepping stone back to a less tense atmosphere. 

"Did you walk here?" 

"Ran. It's not too far," Lara shrugs.

"You're insane," Sam laughs. It’s a small relief that they fall so quickly back into their usual patterns. Lara knows it’s only a band-aid on a much bigger wound, but she isn’t ready to confront the reality yet. Wonders if she ever will be.

"You can spend hours in a club on a dance floor and  _ I'm  _ insane?" Lara says with a grin. She grabs her gym bag and follows Sam out, the late night receptionist waving a polite goodbye to them. 

“That’s different,” Sam replies as she leads Lara towards her car, “dancing is actually fun, sweetie.”

Lara rolls her eyes. “We are very different people,” she laughs.

“But you love me anyway,” Sam grins triumphantly as they both get in. Lara lets out a breath of relief as she settles in the passenger seat, both for the physical comfort of being off her feet and that Sam has gone back to her usual light-hearted self. She pushes down any feelings she has about Sam’s comment. Lara knows what the fluttering in her stomach must mean, but she's far too tired to dissect any of it. It’s another event that’ll have to be added to the list of unresolved issues. So instead, she closes her eyes and feels herself drift off to an exhaustion induced nap before Sam can even start the car despite knowing they’ll be home in less than ten minutes. It isn’t a deep sleep, and she’s vaguely aware of Sam fiddling with her phone to find the right music to play before pulling out of the gym parking lot. She’s too tired to do anything about the hand Sam places over her own and, still half asleep, she laces their fingers together, liking the comfort that fills all the empty spaces she hadn’t known existed. 

She feels the car slow to a stop and her eyes flutter open, feels Sam’s hand start to leave hers and she sleepily tightens her grip.

“Lara,” Sam says softly and squeezes Lara’s hand, “we’re home.” 

Lara groans, not wanting to move an inch, and closes her eyes again. “Can we just stay like this,” she finds herself saying, “just for a minute.”

“Sweetie, as much as I’d enjoy that, you really need to take a shower.”

Lara laughs, and her body jolts awake. “You’re awful.”

“I’m just telling the truth,” Sam shrugs with a teasing grin and Lara finally lets go of the death grip she has on her hand. She would’ve felt embarrassed if she had the energy. She follows Sam out the car and lets out a long yawn. 

Her body is on autopilot, her legs nearly giving out on her halfway there. Sam is quick to react and reaches out to steady Lara. She wraps an arm around her delirious friend and firmly places a hand on her waist. 

"Shit," Lara can't help but laugh and lean into the warmth, her arms wrapping around her and pulling her as close as possible. "I've really done it to myself this time, haven't I?"

Sam doesn't respond and simply leads them inside and into the elevator. They both lean against the wall, and Lara feels her head drop down to Sam's shoulder.

She admits it's nice, Sam's arms around her. 

"Thanks, Sam," Lara mutters just as the elevator reaches their floor. 

"Thank me after you shower," Sam jokes. 

"Is it really that bad or are you just messing with me?" Lara asks. She keeps her head on her shoulder as she listens to Sam fumble around her bag for the keys to their flat.

"A little bit of both.” She can practically hear the teasing grin on Sam’s face.

Once the door opens, Lara reluctantly lets go and walks off towards her room. “Thanks again, Sam,” Lara says over her shoulder.

“Anytime,” Sam responds softly, and she feels distant in more ways than one. 

Lara pauses at her door, wonders if she should say something, if she should do something, if she should let herself be vulnerable again. A few seconds turn into a few minutes and the sound of a door closing brings her back to the present. When she turns to check on Sam, she realizes the other girl had already retreated into her room. She frowns and she already knows that despite the exhaustion, she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.

She drags her feet along the floor as she makes her way to the bathroom to take a much needed shower. When she’s finished she glances at the clock and sees that it’s nearly midnight she internally groans at what would likely be another rough night. When she lies down on her bed, there’s a mix of relief and dread that fills her. She can practically feel her body thanking her—her muscles are more than happy to have a moment to finally rest—but her mind refuses to take comfort in this small victory.

She pulls out her phone in hopes of a distraction, but she knows it’s a lost cause—or is it a lost cause simply because she has already decided it is so? She bites her lip and wonders if she should call Roth. Would he even be awake? Lara shakes her head and presses the call button. What could it hurt? She needs someone to talk to, and Roth is one of the few that might be able to lull her anxiety and slow her thoughts. 

Sam is great, a little too great. So great that sometimes she made her anxiety a little worse. Talking to her might be just a tad counterproductive. 

She presses the phone tightly against her ear, listening to each ring with anticipation. She starts to think that this was a terrible idea—because why would Roth be awake so late?—and pulls the phone away from her ear just as there’s a click and a groggy, “hello?” on the other side. 

“Roth?”

“Lara? Is everything okay?” he grumbles, still half asleep.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I woke you, didn’t I? I didn’t think you’d pick up,” Lara rambles. “Go back to sleep Roth, I—”

“Lara,” he cuts her off, sounding much more awake, “what’s wrong?”

Lara chuckles softly. Roth hasn't ever been the type of person to beat around the bush. She enjoys that about him. “Haven’t you noticed the date lately?” 

He lets out a hum of understanding and Lara can hear him shuffling around on the other end. “Slipped my mind, honestly. How are you?” She’s jealous—maybe a little angry—that Roth doesn’t seem as affected as she is. Weren’t they his friends? She knows Roth’s time in the military had hardened him in more ways than Lara could possibly imagine, but did he not grieve their deaths at all? 

Somewhere in the back of her head, behind all the anger and fear, a rational voice—which, oddly enough, sounds a bit like Roth himself—tells her that grief is a creature that takes many shapes, and it quells her anger, if only slightly.

Lara lets out an unsteady breath. “It’s not easy,” she admits quietly for the first time since she's left Roth's side, “I miss them. I can’t stop thinking about them. About how different it could’ve been. About how if—” 

“I know, Lara,” he sighs, “I miss them too, but it was out of our control.” The level-headedness in his voice that normally comforted Lara begins to infuriate her a little. She’s too restless, she realizes, and knows she’s being irrational. She needs to  _ sleep _ .

“I know, I know. I just...overthink everything.”

“That you do,” he chuckles. “Is there anything I can do to help? Haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

“No, not really,” she sighs, wondering if she should just hang up. Roth hadn’t nearly been as comforting as she thought he’d be. But who else does she have to turn to? Sam? “I don’t really know, Roth. I know we go through this every year but...this time feels different.”

”Is there something else on your mind?” 

“I just miss you, I guess,” Lara tells him. It's the truth, despite her growing annoyance with him, but there's a nagging feeling in Lara that tells her it's more than just that. “This is the first year that you’re not around for this. I just wish I had someone to talk to.”

“I’m sorry I couldn't come visit this time, Lara. It must be lonely.”

Lara takes a deep breath to control the wave of emotions that come over her, her eyes prickling with tears. 

“Yeah,” she breaths, “it really is.”

_ Lonely. _

Lara hadn't really thought about it, hadn't really associated that word with her, and it makes her feel dumb for not piecing it together herself because it's blindingly obvious in hindsight. She never had many friends, and she had always been okay with that. Roth and Winston always said that she preferred the company of adults when she was younger. Was that really what she preferred? Or was she just so incredibly alienated from her posh peers that she could never find common ground with them?

She had lost her mother young. Her father was gone all the time, retreated into his own world consumed with myths and legends, before she lost him too. 

How was a god damned eleven year-old  _ supposed _ to act after all that? 

No wonder she’s alone. It’s all she knows, really.

“What about your friend? Sam, wasn’t it? Don’t you two live together now?”

For a second, Lara’s thoughts screech to a complete halt, and she has trouble pinpointing exactly why she feels so shy about the topic. It isn’t as if Roth has no idea who Sam is—he had met her a handful of times and mentioned to her that he thought she was a good fit for her, whatever that was supposed to mean—but Lara is oddly tongue-tied when it comes to talking to him about Sam. She realizes it’s strange, because wasn’t she just about to pour her heart out to him about her parents? 

“Yes. Yeah, we do,” Lara answers awkwardly. “But she doesn’t…I can’t talk to her about these things, Roth.”

“Why not?” 

“ _ Why not? _ ” Lara repeats incredulously and can't help but let out a scoff. Shouldn't the answer be obvious? “Roth, this is…” She bites her lip, unsure of how to finish the thought. Maybe it isn't as obvious as she originally thought. Roth waits patiently, and the silence fills the line more than words could’ve. “This is too personal,” she finally tells him in what feels like the quietest voice she has ever used with him.

Roth hums in understanding and another round of silence surrounds them once more. Lara sits in it, lets it wash over her, unsure of how to interpret the knots in her stomach. She hears him take a deep breath and it’s unclear why she feels like she has to mentally ready herself for what she’s about to hear.

Roth had always said she had great instincts.

“And what if I’m not here one day Lara? Who will you talk to then?” He pauses to give Lara a chance to interrupt. She doesn’t. “I’m not saying that you have to open up to Sam right at this very moment—I’m certainly not planning on leaving your life anytime soon—but I hope you let someone in one day, whenever you’re ready.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be ready for the day you won’t be here, Roth.”

She had lost so much already, she doesn’t like to think about more loss.

"You will be," he says confidently. "You're a Croft, after all."

She laughs, despite herself. It's incredulous to her that Roth is speaking so freely about leaving her—as if it were inevitable. And in the deep recesses of her mind, Lara knows it is. She still feels the pain from the loss of her parents years ago, she isn't ready to begin thinking about more loss.

She wonders if it'll ever not feel this way, if the ache will ever really dull.

"She doesn't, I mean, Sam is…" she lets the words hover in the air, as if the rest will come and complete the thought on its own. Roth is frustratingly patient, and they sit in the brief silence together. "She doesn't need the burden," Lara finishes.

It's not quite right, but it's the closest to the truth about Sam as she can will herself to admit.

Roth hums in understanding. She hears the gears turning in his head, trying to figure out how to best console her, but she also catches the stifled yawn and decides that this conversation can wait another day. 

"Go back to sleep Roth," she tells him. "I'll be alright for the rest of the night."

"Lara," he says roughly, "I've been through much worse than late night conversations interrupting my sleep. I can keep talking."

"I have no doubt that you can," Lara laughs, "but it's really alright. I think I need to be by myself right now anyway."

By herself. As soon as the words had left her mouth she knew they weren't true. She was lonely,  _ is  _ lonely, almost unbearably so. But being alone is what she's used to.

It's painful, but it's also comforting—something Lara knows should probably be addressed at some point. 

Roth is smart enough to know it's a lie—he wants to point out that  _ she _ called  _ him _ and not the other way around—but he's also smart enough to know there's not much else he can do when Lara has her mind set on something, a trait he finds endearing if not slightly annoying. So, he lets her go with a sigh and a quiet, "goodnight, I’m here if you need me, Lara."

She’s thankful that Roth doesn’t put up much of a fight, but she feels the weight of the empty room more than she did before. She’s alone, knows that there’s a father figure only a call away and a loving roommate the next room over, but she’s alone. Is this what she really wants? Or does it not matter what she wants anymore? 

Maybe it doesn’t, and maybe that’s okay.

Lara shakes her head of those thoughts. It was anything but productive, and if Lara is known for anything, it’s being productive. So, she drags herself out of bed and heads out into the living room—her own room feels too haunted by her own thoughts—to get some type of work done. And  _ god,  _ does her aching body scream at her from making it leave the comforts of her bed, but she is nothing but determined. She pulls out one of her books on ancient Japanese history and decides she might as well get ahead of her readings while she’s up. She settles on the couch, book on her lap and a box of Jaffa Cakes by her side, and dives into the reading.

She’s good at this, always has been, at losing herself in the past. It was all so wonderful and fascinating and so incredibly  _ alluring _ . There are times where she is tempted to lose herself even further, into the lore and mysticism of it all—the possibility of something  _ greater— _ but she  _ can’t _ . No, she has to stick to the facts, to what is  _ known _ . The tangibles. 

It doesn’t matter what she  _ wants _ , she tells herself, because that’s what took her father. She can’t let it take her too. 

“Lara?”

“Shit, I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“Yeah,” Sam shrugs, “but it’s alright.” She sits next to Lara on the couch—far enough to not be touching her but close enough for Lara to want her to—peering curiously over at the book on her lap. “Catching up on readings?”

“Getting ahead,” Lara corrects her. Sam scrunches her face in disgust, as if all students should perpetually be behind in their work and anyone that had actually kept up with the outrageous timelines professors set up for them was inhuman. 

But maybe that’s what Lara is. Not human.

“Student of the year over here,” Sam drawls, voice laced with the remnants of an interrupted night in bed, but when Lara looks up Sam is sitting with her knees curled up to her chest, body turned completely towards her, looking back with an expression she can only describe as  _ adoration _ . 

Lara laughs, and it feels good. To sit there with her roommate who looks at her with stars in her eyes and laugh. And it’s so  _ easy _ with Sam. So easy to be present, to not feel the need to drown herself in the lives and cultures of what came before her. 

_ Easy. _ She could get used to easy. 

“Sam,” she whispers, because she fears anything louder will break the illusion of  _ easy. _ “I…”

“Oh, sweetie,” Sam softens and the stars in her eyes turn into a look of concern and— _ oh _ .

She’s crying. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why—“

“Shh, it’s alright,” Sam whispers. “Lara—” 

“My parents,” her voice cracks, “I—it happened, you know, in a few days, it’ll be…” Sam nods in understanding, her body shifting as if she wants to reach out, but she stays still and Lara wants to scream at her to reach out, to move closer, to do  _ something _ . “That’s—that’s why I’ve been weird, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do or what to tell you and I tried talking to Roth but this time it’s just so…”

It’s quite possibly the least amount of sense Lara has ever made. Lara wants to take it all back, wants to run it through her head again and let it out when the words have formed a coherent thought.

“It’s okay,” Sam tells her. 

“It’s  _ not  _ okay,” Lara shakes her head, can’t stop her voice from cracking again. “And  _ I’m...I’m  _ not…” She can’t finish the thought.

“Lara, sweetie, what do you want from me right now?”

Sam says it so softly that Lara nearly breaks. Sam, who, if she looks closely enough, still has stars in her eyes.

“I don’t know what I want.”

She wants to reach out. Lay a hand over hers. Brush that lock of hair away from her eyes. Wrap an arm around her neck and pull her into a bone crushing hug. Wants Sam to hold her like she did when they walked up. Her body nearly throbs with how much she wants to be  _ touched _ . By Sam, or anyone really, but especially Sam. She wants to be pulled into the present, into  _ now _ . God, does she  _ want  _ so many things.

Lara tells her she doesn’t know, but Sam knows somehow anyway and finally—feels like  _ finally,  _ as if hugs and small physical intimacies aren’t commonly initiated by Sam—reaches out and pulls her aching body into a hug. Lara curls into her and buries her face into the crook of her neck and lets herself cry, lets the dam burst and her heart be filled.


	2. Yamatai (where she learns she's more than she thinks she is)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a bit of a beast of a chapter, a little over 21k words. I suppose that's what happens when you try to fit an entire game in one chapter. You could say I got a little carried away.
> 
> This is mostly a retelling of the first game, but it isn't meant to be a novelization of it. It was written with the assumption that you all have played the game before. It sticks to the script for the most part, with bits and pieces changed to have it make a little more sense narratively, and a little additional scene at the end. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, all five of you that are reading this.

Lara tells herself that it’s only a storm, that Grim will get them through it, and she should just focus on the music blasting through her ears. But tonight, she can’t ignore that there's an energy that feels different and Lara _knows_ it. _Feels_ it in her bones. Twenty-two days out at sea and not one night has felt this way. It’s unnerving, but Lara knows she’s right. Yamatai _has_ to be just around the corner. 

And if she _is_ right? At what cost?

Because then the ship tumbles and she falls hard off the desk she was perched on and when she opens the door a flood of water comes through the hallway.

Before she knows it she’s underwater, trying to reach out for something to hang onto, something to pull her up. She screams for help as soon as she has the opportunity, helplessly slamming a fist against the window. It’s a lost cause as she takes in just how quickly the water level is rising.

She lets the water take her for a second, closes her eyes and accepts defeat. 

She’s gone. She thinks about Roth. About Sam. About all the things she wanted and would now never get the opportunity to pursue. She hopes they’re better off somewhere, that they’d managed to save themselves and lets herself fall into the fantasy that they’re alright. Because if she’s going to die, she’s going to die full of hope that she hadn’t doomed her loved ones to death.

But then she’s out of the water, gasping for breath. She doesn’t have time to look at who had pulled her out because she hears Roth calling for her. There’s no time to catch her breath when she sees Roth frantically reaching out for her on a ship that’s been torn in half by the storm. Her body stands before she can even think twice and then she’s running as fast as her legs will allow. 

And she jumps.

————

Lara thinks she has never really known true fear until this moment. Whoever has taken her has wrapped her in a tight cocoon of multiple layers of cloth. and she’s only half aware that she’s being dragged across the ground before an absolutely _dreadful_ smell pierces her senses and she’s lulled back to unconsciousness for a few more minutes before waking up with a startled gasp, upside down, tied up by her feet.

She should’ve drowned on the ship.

That’s all she can think as she frantically looks around and sees herself surrounded by what she can only assume are other dead bodies, tied up similarly. She almost wants to give up again, to die.

But _no_ , she can’t die like this. Not in some cave where who knows what has happened. Not while Roth and Sam might still be out there on this dreadful island with these _people_ that stuck her here. 

No, she has to keep going.

She screams for help and struggles against her restraints, the blood beginning to rush to her head far too quickly for her liking. She knows she has to stay calm, but _god,_ what the actual _fuck_ is happening to her? She feels herself swing back and forth and when one of the other cocoons gets caught on fire she has an idea. 

“I can’t die like this.”

She has to say it out loud. Has to hear it echo in the cave. It’s the only way she can keep herself from completely losing it.

She looks at the skeleton that fell out from the cocoon.

“This is going to hurt.”

———— 

Lara can hardly believe her luck.

She’s alive.

There isn’t any time to question how she had gotten out of the cave, no time to think about the absolute horrors that she’d just witnessed, or even time to address the wound on her left side. She manages to get herself to stand and is pleasantly surprised that the pain is bearable, at least for the time being. WIth a glance out to the beach that is littered with shipwrecks, Lara wills herself to move forward rather than linger on the completely irrational thought that this island is cursed. 

Just keep moving, It was what she had repeated to herself in the cave and it worked, so she tells herself again, _just keep moving_. 

She had seen Jonah and Reyes out on the beach before she had been taken. She clings onto the hope she can find her way out to them again. She tries not to let her mind wander to the possibility of either Roth or Sam not making it because the moment she does, she knows she’ll lose whatever sick game the world has decided to play on her today. 

She tumbles forward when she trips over her feet, her balance off-center because the pain has only been getting worse, and leans against a tree trunk to let herself rest for a few seconds. Her eyes catch something else on the beach.

“A lifeboat!” It was from the Endurance, she knows it was, it _had_ to be. “But where are they? They must have gone inland.” 

Talking to herself had always been common—Roth had told her once that it was something she must’ve gotten from her father. Sam just teased her about it. It helps ground her to reality, helps her stay focused on the present. 

And now especially is _not_ a time to go slipping back into the past.

The terrain is unforgiving, and she tries to rekindle any kind of muscle memory she retained from her early years of gymnastics as she tries to balance herself across a fallen tree and leap across clifftops and climb a bloody plane that crashed into the cliffside who knows how long ago. It’s insane. _This is absolutely insane._ But she’s alive and she has to keep going.

She’s not dead yet.

She can’t die yet.

After she scales a small wall she reaches a small clearing, her eyes are immediately drawn to the bag in the middle of what looked like had been a small camp. 

“Sam’s pack!” 

Relief and fear both fill her at once, because Sam had obviously been through here—maybe some others as well from the looks of it, and she can only hope that Sam isn’t navigating the island alone—but it’s also obvious that she’s long gone. And with the pack so carelessly left behind, it doesn’t look like she had left so willingly. 

“Sam!” Lara shouts anyway, hoping that by some miracle, she’ll hear her. “They must have come this way...”

She dumps out the contents of Sam’s pack and finds her camcorder, a box of matches, and a two-way radio, which she immediately fiddles with and turns on.

“Sam?! Roth? Can anyone hear me?” 

No answer.

“I’ve got to find them.”

There’s nothing else useful in the area. It looked as if it had been ransacked anyway. She shakes her head before her mind can run with any wild possibilities and sets off again in search of the Endurance crew. 

But then her grip slips on a jump and she falls and slides down towards another pathway. The storm is getting worse and if she keeps going she knows more accidents like that will just keep happening. Wolves howl in the distance as she treks through the storm, hoping to find some form of shelter. She can’t stop shivering and it’s only getting worse.

She gets lucky again—scoffs at herself for thinking that any of this was _lucky—_ when she finds an abandoned campfire. 

She pulls out her radio again, desperate for contact. “Is anyone listening? Please respond.”

Static. 

She decides her best course of action is to stay put for now and work on setting up a fire. There’s only one match left in the box, something she hadn’t noticed initially, but it’s dry and does the job just fine. For all that had happened in the last few hours, Lara can’t help but let out a sigh of relief when she feels the warmth from the fire on her skin. 

The radio starts to make noise and she can’t help but cradle it in her hands. It’s her only form of communication and _damn it, it has to reach someone._ But there’s nothing again, and she gently places it next to her just in case someone on the other end will respond. It’s wishful thinking, she knows, but wishful thinking is all she really has at this point.

She remembers Sam’s camcorder and decides now is as good a time as any to pull it out and see what’s on it. When she opens it up and presses play the first thing she sees is herself sitting at a desk on the tiny screen and Sam’s voice fills her ears.

_“Here’s the soon-to-be-world-famous archeologist, Lara Croft, in her native habitat.”_

Lara can’t help but smile at her teasing tone. She remembers this.

The camera pulls away from Lara and turns to face a mirror, and suddenly Sam’s face is staring back at her and her heart begins to ache. God, she misses her.

_“She’s on the hunt for the lost kingdom of Yamatai, home to the fabulous Himiko, mythical Sun Queen, and ancestor of yours truly.”_

_“Sam,” Lara laughs, “this is serious.”_

_“Oh sweetie, I know.” Lara shoots her a look. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood here. Everyone’s so on edge! What are you so worried about?”_

Lara sucks in a breath and holds in her tears. Sam is fine. She has to be. Sam is fine. Sam is okay. Sam is a goddamn stubborn-as-fuck American and is alive. Lara knows. She just knows.

_“I’m close to something, I’m sure of it.” Lara sighs deeply. “I just don’t know if the others will listen...or, even if they should.” She leans back in her chair, doubt seeping through her body._

_“Lara, you know this stuff better than anyone! Seriously, I”m not just saying this to make you feel better. I trust you...Roth trusts you! You got this.” Lara looks up at Sam with a smile. “Now, let’s take a break, okay?”_

_“Okay, okay,” Lara relents with another laugh. “And Sam...thanks.”_

_The camera turns around and Sam’s face graces the screen again. “She’s not always this serious, you know?”_

Sam trusted her. Roth trusted her. Look where that got them. She shakes her head and focuses on the screen again, staring at Sam’s face before the video cuts to one of them all in the kitchen and her stomach drops. She remembers this too.

She almost rewinds just so she can keep staring at Sam’s face and listen to Sam’ reassuring voice. If she’s going to be stuck here, she might as well take comfort in the little things. She shakes her head again. She didn’t have the time to entertain those ridiculous thoughts.

_Grim and Roth are cheering for opposite football teams over the radio. The camera pans from Jonah, cooking something stirring their dinner in a pot, to Whitman talking to Lara._

_“How can you suggest I’m not serious about this expedition, Lara? It’s not just Sam’s family funding us, I’ve put my savings on the line too,” Whitman tells her._

_“We’ve all got some kind of stake in this,” Reyes interrupts, fiddling with something in her hands at the table, “the funding won’t last forever, Whitman.”_

_“That’s precisely why we should push east, not west,” Lara pushes._

_“No one believes Yamat—“ Grim and Roth’s laughter interrupt him as Grim cheers for his team scoring a goal. Whitman shoots them an annoying glare that goes ignored. “No one believes Yamatai is that far east. The books simply don’t support it!”_

_“Well, whoever wrote those books never found Yamatai,” Sam adds. Lara gives her a thankful smile before turning back to Whitman._

_“I’ve talked to Roth about this. There’s no point in following other people’s footsteps, Dr. Whitman,” Lara argues._

_“I refuse to bet my reputation on your hunch! I’m the lead archeologist here.”_

_“An’ when were you last on the field without a TV crew behind you?” Grim asks._

_“I’ve got thirty years experience, two PhDs, one in East Asian history, so why don’t you just stick to boats Mr. Grim.”_

_“Ship, Dr. Whitman, it’s a ship,” Grim corrects him. “Don’t need a PhD to know that.”_

Dr. Whitman had been such a grade-A asshole the entire trip. Every time he had opened his mouth, Lara had to hold back the urge to roll her eyes.

But god, Lara can’t deny it’s nice to see everyone again, even through the small screen, even though this is the moment it all went wrong, the moment where they all decided to put their trust in her. She’s shaking again, not from the cold, but from the sheer anger at herself. Look what she had gotten them into. Dr. Whitman was right, as much as she hated to admit it. It was just a hunch, a feeling. What did she know?

It’s too late, she has to tell herself, because what’s done is done. The only thing she can do now is fix it.

_“Look.” Lara tries to stop the squabble between Whitman and Grim. “Going east will take us directly into the Dragon’s Triangle. That’s where we need to go.”_

_“Lara, my little bird, I’d follow you almost anywhere, but that place has a bad energy,” Jonah looks directly at her as he tells her this and sets down a bowl of the stew he had been making._

_“Bad storms more like,” Alex informs them. “Makes the Bermuda Triangle look like Disney world...Sign me up.”_

All the signs were there. They should’ve never made their way in this direction. Even Jonah knew.

Lara wants to bang her head against the wall for her naivety. 

_“The stories about Queen Himiko say she could summon storms. Myths are usually based on some version of the truth. What if Yamatai were somewhere in the Triangle itself?” Lara argues._

_“Look, this is the satellite imagery from inside the Dragon’s Triangle,” Alex turns his laptop to show everyone._

_“That doesn’t look good,” says Sam._

_“If it’s wet, I can sail on it,” Grim assures them._

_Whitman glares at him. “Oh don’t tell me you’re seriously consi—“_

_“Enough!” Roth shouts. “Reyes is right, we don’t have the fund to piss about. It’s now or never. Lara’s offering fresh ideas and a plan. I’m the captain here, it’s my decision. We’re going into the Dragon’s Triangle,” he says with finality. He was the captain for a reason. He knew how to command a room._

_“Why am I even here,” Whitman says angrily before walking away._

_“Go on, show us your plan…” Roth murmurs to her before the video cuts off._

Lara decides she’s had enough of watching the videos from the camera. It’s too much for now and it only fuels her guilt. However nice it is to see and hear Roth and Sam and the rest of the crew, it’s unproductive. She hates feeling unproductive. She needs to be _doing_ something right now, but there’s nothing she can do. She’s powerless to fix anything, to assuage her growing guilt, and it drives her mad. 

———— 

“This is Conrad Roth, captain of the Endurance.”

The radio. The fucking radio. _Thank god._

She had never been so excited to hear Roth’s voice. 

“We are shipwrecked on an island inside the Dragon’s Triangle.”

“Roth!” Lara shouts into the radio, nearly wanting to cry at her first human contact on the island outside of whatever that insanity was that happened in that cave. She hears Roth sputter out her name in shock but Lara can’t help but let out, “you’re alive!”

“Easy, easy, Are you okay? What happened?” She doesn’t recall hearing Roth sound this panicked ever. Even so, his presence is a calming one, and Lara feels herself sink into the sound of his voice.

“I remember the beach...then it went black and I woke up in a cave…” She doesn’t want to think about it, but the words spill out anyway, as if Roth has the power to take away the horrors if she can only find the right words. “There was this crazy man, Roth...and a dead body.”

“Oh god...where are you now, Lara? Are you safe?”

She doesn’t hear him.

“It was so horrible,” her voice cracks, “It’s all my fault, this is all my fault—” 

“Lara! Listen to me,” he tells her sternly, his ability to seize control of a situation still strong even through a radio. “I sent an SOS from the Endurance before I abandoned her. Hopefully someone caught it. I’ve spoken to the others, we’re regrouping at my location.”

She lets out a choked breath. There are other survivors, at least, and there’s a plan. A tentative one, but it’s something. Roth is a godsend. There are so many things Lara wants to say and ask, but the fear she had successfully held back until now starts to simmer underneath her skin and she doesn’t know if she can go on. She wants to lean on Roth, wants to throw the reins over to him.

She isn’t capable of doing anything on her own, no matter how much she tries to fool herself. 

“Please come and get me,” she pleads with him.

“I have to stay here,” he tells her gently. “You can do this, Lara. Remember when we climbed Snowden? You said the key was knowing all that you’ve to do is just—”

“Keep moving,” they finish at the same time. Lara closes her eyes and tries to shut out the fear and the doubt again through sheer will. She said it to herself earlier, didn’t she? Keep moving. That’s it. That’s all it is. If she focuses on just one step at a time, then the fear and doubt will have no room in her body.

Right?

“Remember everything I’ve taught you, Lara. You’re ready for this. And keep your radio on.”

“Okay.”

Right. Just keep moving.

———— 

“Hold on, let me find out.”

Sam. Oh god, Sam. That had to be Sam. 

But something feels wrong. Lara can’t explain it, it’s another one of her stupid gut feelings and she can’t shake the idea that something horrific is happening. She’s torn between wanting to run straight to the source of the sound and jumping into her arms, and pulling out her bow and approaching cautiously. 

The latter wins out, because Lara likes to tell herself that she’s driven by logic over anything else.

There’s a man’s voice she doesn’t recognize and she has to forcibly still her shaking limbs. All she can think about is Sam. Is she alright? Who is she talking to? What hell had she gone through? Did she hate her for bringing them here? Did she still trust her, after all that had happened?

“Did you get that?”

Lara crouches down and listens to Sam’s voice—almost gets lost in it for a second, but Lara is more hesitant to let herself sink into her voice as quickly as she did with Roth. It’s different with Sam, it always has been.

Sam is different.

“Got it,” Reyes’ voice rings from the radio. She can only assume that the others are on their way. She should feel relieved; they were all about to be reunited, after all. They could finally regroup, find Roth, and figure out a way to survive and get off this godforsaken island. Something is still off, though, and Lara can feel her skin tingling near the surface, as if her own body is trying to tell her the same thing.

“We have a fire, look for the smoke.”

“We’re on our way.”

She leans back against a rock and inches closer to the edge. It’s silly, it’s just Sam for god’s sake, _her_ Sam, but her body is running on autopilot. When she peeks out to see if there’s anything wrong, Sam spots her immediately, and Lara’s heart races at the sight of her.

She’s alive, _thank god she’s alive._

“Lara! You made it! Sam shouts, relieved.

“Sam,” Lara finally says, “thank goodness.” 

It’s not the reunion she wants. Because what she really wants is to run over and hold her and never let her go, at least not until they’re off this island. Hell, maybe even after they’re off she won’t let go. The want slams into her with a surprising amount of force that she has to will herself to focus on the present again.

She’s delirious. She must be.

But there’s a new pair of eyes watching her closely and she has to repress a shiver. She nearly stills at the presence and her eyes dart between Sam and the newcomer cautiously. 

“Um,” Sam tilts her head in confusion at Lara’s wariness, “surprise!” The man stands up and moves to greet her. “It’s okay, he’s one of us.”

It’s too late, Lara has already decided she doesn’t trust this man. 

“Sorry if I startled you,” he smiles. It’s more unnerving than it is comforting. “This place would make anyone a little jumpy. We just spoke to your crew,” another disturbing grin, “they’re on their way.”

“Look, he bandaged my foot,” Sam tells her in an attempt to reassure Lara that this man is one of the good ones. Lara wants to shake some sense into her, wants to scream and shout at her to take a good look at the man standing in front of them and tell her if any of this makes sense.

Doubt starts to creep in again. Maybe Lara is the one that’s wrong, maybe the delirium has really set in. God, she really needs some rest. 

“It was the least I could do,” the man says, stepping in front of her. Lara has to resist the urge to shove him aside. All she wants is to be by Sam, to look after her foot, to see if he had even done it right, to just sit by her and close her eyes and rest knowing that Sam is safe. But he steps closer and Lara takes a step back, narrowing her eyes. “My manners, I’m sorry. I’m Mathias.”

He holds a hand out for her to shake. 

“A teacher by trade,” he continues when Lara makes no effort to reach out.

She takes another breath and a glance at her friend, who seems to be perfectly fine given the circumstances. She decides to reach out and shake his hand, ignoring every impulse in her body telling her not to, but she doesn’t say a word, not even her name. 

“Not really cut out for island life, I’m afraid.”

She walks away, not wanting to be touching him or even near him, even if it means she can’t be by Sam. As long as she’s got eyes on her, it’s okay.

There’s something _wrong_ and she knows it, but her body aches and she starts to feel the exhaustion kick in. Sam stares at her, filled with worry and concern—she always had a knack for knowing how to read her well. She’s one of the only people that really could, one of the ones that Lara let in enough to figure out.

“Sweetie, you look exhausted, sit down!”

“Yeah,” Lara agrees, decides to let her guard down for a second. Not of her own will, but simply because she just can’t find the energy to keep it up for much longer. As long as she keeps her eyes open, she’ll be fine. At least until the others get here, until they reach Roth. 

“Sam here was just telling me about the Sun Queen.”

“Right, Himiko!”

Despite herself, Lara can’t help but smile at the excitement in Sam’s voice. She misses her, even though she’s right in front of her, she misses her. 

“Can you tell me more? I’m intrigued.”

“Well, believe it or not, a couple thousand years ago Queen Himiko pretty much ran things in Japan.”

Lara’s grin grows even wider as she begins to speak. “She loves telling this story…” Sam sneaks her a glance and winks at her and it’s the most relaxed Lara has felt since crashing on the island. 

“Himiko was beautiful, enigmatic, but also ruthless and powerful. Legend says she has shamanistic powers.”

“And _this_ is where she loses me.” Lara almost forgets about Mathias sitting on the other side of the fire, lost in the story she’s heard a million times. It’s strangely comforting, even if she doesn’t quite believe the story wholeheartedly—she isn’t even sure Sam does.

“Well, there’s always some truth to myths,” Mathias grins again. He seems absolutely elated, and Lara wants to press him about it. He’s supposedly shipwrecked here too, what has him so happy if he’s just a simple teacher out here on his own?

When Sam starts to speak again, Lara’s attention snaps back to her.

“She commanded an army of Samurai warriors, her magnificent stormguard. They rode the very winds into battle, laying waste to all those who opposed them.They say, the sun rose at Himiko’s command and she ruled everything its rays touched, from the mountains, to the sea, and beyond.”

She closes her eyes, relaxes at the sound of Sam’s voice, the story lulling her to sleep like a lullaby. 

Sam is a wonderful storyteller.

———— 

_Boom!_

“Sam?”

 _Fuck_ , she had fallen asleep, and a quick glance around the camp had made it more than obvious that both Sam and Mathias are gone. Her heart sinks and she feels the panic rise up through her throat. How could she be so _stupid?_ Sam was right there, _right in front of her,_ and she let her slip through her fingers. Fuck. _Fuck._

“Mathias?” she tries to call out as she hurriedly stands up, but the name feels like venom in her mouth. “Sam!” she shouts, tears threatening to fall from her eyes. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ “Sam!” she tries again before breaking out into a run towards the forest. How long had she been asleep? It couldn’t have been long. Maybe she can still catch them. Maybe she can still fix this.

“Shit!” her voice breaks, breathing ragged. What if they had taken her to another one of those caves she was in earlier? No, no, no. Lara had no time for what-ifs. She’ll find Sam. She has to. _Has to._

_Clank!_

Her foot gets stuck in some type of bear trap—who the _fuck_ had put that there?— and she screams in pain and shock. “No!” she shouts. She doesn’t have the time to get stuck. She needs to find Sam. “Sam!” she screams, louder and longer than before, her voice cracking as she struggles to get out of the trap and her breathing growing more and more ragged. She’s panicking, spiraling, and she can’t stop. 

There’s a sound in the distance and Lara can barely make out what it is in the midst of her struggle.

_Wolves._

She freezes for a second, before her instincts kick in and grabs her bow. She’s not dead yet, and she won’t be dead any time soon, but she can’t seem to control her breathing, especially when she hears rustling in the grass by her. There’s a low growl and she readies her bow, steels herself to steady her arms, and manages to pierce an arrow straight through the wolf’s head just as it jumps towards her. 

_Fuck._

Another snarl. Another arrow through the head. 

Just. Keep. Going.

One more, and they’re gone, for now. 

She tries to find the release on the trap, but she can’t seem to recall Roth’s teachings and her hands frantically try to pry it apart by sheer force. If she can shoot down three bloody wolves while stuck in this thing, she might as well try. 

“Over here!” she hears a shout, and she looks up to see the next best person.

“Reyes!” she screams. If there is anyone that would know what to do, it would be her. Roth trusted her with his life, so would she. 

“I found Lara!” she shouts to the others as she rushes to her. “Let go,” she instructs, and Lara listens obediently before shooting her free and Jonah pries her foot out before he and Reyes help lift her up.

“It’s good to see you, little bird,” Jonah tells her. She takes a quick glance around. 

Reyes. Jonah. Alex. Grim. Whitman.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she breaths, finally feeling her heart rate settle. At least the panic had started to subside a little. “Is Sam with you?” She knows the answer, but she had to ask anyway. 

They stare at her, confused. “She was with you,” Jonah answers.

“She was here...with that man, Mathias,” she tries to walk, but the pain in her foot finally starts to register and she leans on her bow, Jonah rushing forward to steady her, concerned. “But I passed out. When I woke up, they were both gone.”

“You girls shouldn’t go wandering off!” Grim says with a scowl. Lara knows he’s only concerned.

“We need to find them.” 

“Uh, w-wait, what about Roth?” Whitman interrupts. Lara wants to roll her eyes, but it’s not the time nor the place.

She needs to find Sam. Needs to see her. Needs to make sure she’s okay. 

“Okay, let’s split up,” Reyes suggests. Lara’s glad someone is calling the shots, because she definitely isn’t in a position to be leading anyone anywhere. “One of us go with Lara and meet up with Roth, the rest of us should fan out and look for Sam.” 

Lara’s not entirely too happy to not be out there looking for Sam, but she knows Reyes is only looking out for her. She’s still limping and she’s the youngest one out of the whole crew. It makes sense for her to go meet up with Roth. 

For _once_ , she wants to forgo logic and rational thought. Because all she wants is to see Sam again, but she’s in no position to argue. Besides, seeing Roth will help her get her head back on straight, she hopes.

“I’ll go with her,” Alex offers.

“No, no,” Whitman steps in, “let, uh, let me.”

She’d rather have Alex, but at this point all she cares about is finding Sam and getting to Roth. She has no leftover energy to care about how the group splits up. 

“You know how to use one of these?” Reyes asks as she hands him a gun. 

Whitman mumbles something about it that Lara really couldn’t care less about.

“Get to Roth. We’ll find Sam and this Mathias guy,” Alex reassures her. She trusts the four of them to find Sam. Maybe it’s a good thing that she’s stuck with Whitman, because she wouldn’t trust him with a damn thing, _especially_ with bringing Sam back. The four of them will find Sam. She believes it. 

The other four leave and Lara tries to walk only for the pain to shoot up from her ankle again. 

“You going to be okay?” Whitman at least has the audacity to sound the slightest bit concerned.

“Yes, I probably just need to rest for a few minutes.”

Whitman helps her up the stairs back up to the campfire and she collapses back down onto the floor. He tells her to sit while he goes to check up ahead and she’s left alone with her thoughts again. 

They’ll find Sam. Sam is okay. They’ll make it off this island together.

She repeats those three sentences until she believes it. 

There are two things that catch her eye, journals. One is empty, and the other is Sam’s. She picks up both and finds a way to pass the time.

————

_ How do I start...? Okay. This is Lara Croft - an archeologist from The Endurance, shipwrecked on an island in the Dragon's Triangle - east of Japan. _

_ This place is incredible. I've seen wrecks here that could date back centuries. We weren't the first and I know we're not alone. Something isn't right about this place. _

_ If I don't get off this island, maybe someone will eventually find this. _

———— 

_I can't believe we're actually on an expedition to find the homeland of my ancestors. Ever since I told Lara the story of Himiko years ago, she's been hunting for its location. I never really gave it much thought, that any of this could actually be real history._

_My grandmother used to tell me the story like it was a memory...._

_Many thousands of years ago, Queen Himiko ruled the land of Yamatai. The sun rose at Himiko's command and she ruled everything its rays touched, from the mountains to the sea and beyond. But one day, Yamatai simply disappeared without a trace, forgotten in time._

It feels a little wrong to be reading Sam’s private thoughts, but she can’t bring herself to stop. She relishes this little piece of her she has, lets herself drown in the comfort of Sam’s words, even if only through letters on a page.

But as she rereads it, there’s a sneaking suspicion that she can’t quite rub off. What if _this_ is Yamatai? Is it possible? 

She thinks she’s right, but she hopes to god she’s not.

_Lara's having a crisis of confidence, so for her sake, I'll keep up a happy face. But something about this expedition has been making me nervous. I have butterflies in my stomach. As we sail closer to the Dragon's Triangle, I'm starting to feel nauseous. And this isn't the excited kinda nerves._

_What the hell is wrong with me? I should be excited. This trip is going to be awesome. I just need to shake off this feeling._

_Maybe I can convince Lara to take a break and have a drink with me._

Sam went along with it all for her sake? She thinks back to the video she watched earlier and how she tried to calm her down, to reassure her. Had she been having these kinds of thoughts the whole time? The guilt starts to pour over her again and her hands curl up into fists.

She should’ve paid attention to her. To everyone. But they trusted her. _Sam_ trusted her.

_Whitman is such a drama queen. I can't believe the hissy fit he threw during the filler shoot. I mean, this is his job, right? It's not like he's offering anything to the actual research part of this expedition._

_Once we find Yamatai and the cameras are rolling, he'll calm down. He might be a total pain in the ass, but he knows how to work a scene. I just need to do my job and keep my cool. Lara doesn't know it, but I've been shooting footage of her too. I really want to make sure she gets the credit she deserves. And besides, she looks great on film. I think she's a natural. That's probably going to drive Whitman out of his mind with jealousy. But by the time he finds out, we'll be enjoying the premiere of Telluride!_

Oh Sam, she’s too good to her. Shooting footage of her secretly? Because she looks great on film? It’s the wrong time and place but she can’t stop how her heart flutters at how highly Sam thinks of her. It’s a little strange to want to impress a friend, but Lara wants to anyway and is absolutely thrilled that Sam seems to be a least a little enamoured by her.

She shuts Sam’s diary with a slam. It’s an invasion of privacy and she knows it. Shaking her head of those thoughts, she stands up and decides that she's rested enough and to do what she does best. Move forward.

———— 

When Lara catches up with Whitman at some gate, he rambles on about how fascinating it all is. She’d be more inclined to play along if he hadn’t just literally left her to handle a pack of wolves all on her own when he was the one with the gun. However, she can’t deny that there is something incredible about the island, if not a little creepy. 

The markings on the gate are recent, and Whitman continues to make ridiculous remarks about how remarkable everything is, especially the islanders that were once shipwrecked, like them. Islanders that happened to also be murderers. Besides, they’re not islanders as far as she can tell, they aren’t indigenous to the land. She can only assume they found their way here in the same way Lara and the rest of them did. Lara can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth, as if he had absolutely nothing to fear from being trapped on an island with these people. 

After Lara makes some adjustments to the pry-axe she found earlier, they manage to get the gate open and wander inside.

“That female figure on the gate. Given the age of the symbols, it could be the Sun Queen,” he ponders as they walk along the pathway. 

“Himiko? Are you sure you’re not channeling Sam, Dr. Whitman?” Lara jokes. 

It’s inevitable that her mind wanders to Sam, to the other four and if they’ve managed to find her. They’d contact her on the radio if they did, wouldn’t they? 

“Who knows what else we might find!” he says excitedly. “Well, there’s no doubt, Himiko had power. Some say shamanistic. Elemental!”

Lara scoffs. “A woman wields that much power and sooner or later it gets called witchcraft!”

“We shouldn’t discount anything, even what may seem to us, irrational. We still have much to learn about the world.”

“You sound like my father,” Lara sighs. She absolutely despises him, but there’s a part of her that thinks he has a point. What is archeology if not discovering new things? New ways of thought? New ways to look at the world we grew up in? At how others lived before us, using ways of living we could never dream of? What we think of as rational isn’t universal. Lara knows that, but she struggles not to be consumed by the idea.

She knows what that looks like, after all. 

“It could be one hell of a story, Lara.”

The fire from their torches flicker. 

“Not if we don’t live to tell it.”

———— 

Whitman is a bloody idiot. 

One moment they’re having a conversation about how she was right, _this is Yamatai,_ and all he can go on about is how they’re standing on a gold mine. There’s no time to process any of it, about how they found the long lost island and that she was _right_ , because then the other survivors on the island were upon them and pointing arrows and guns at them and Whitman, _fucking Whitman,_ decides to give them up and she’s tied up and taken away. Lara tries to figure out what they’re saying—they’re Russian, it sounds like. Where in the world did these people come from?

They drag her out and she spots other crew members shouting her name. 

Everything happens too fast for her. She begs them not to hurt the others, a man is sliding a hand up her arm with a sleazy grin on his face, caresses her face and when she tries to pull away, there’s someone shouting at him to let her go and telling her to run and then he’s dead.

Dead.

Lara wants to throw up.

She hadn’t even gotten a good look at his face, couldn’t figure out who he was before he was gone. Someone who cared about her enough to try to defend her, to tell her to run. She didn’t get to say goodbye.

“Oh, no! No!”

The others run too.

Lara doesn’t get to say goodbye to them either.

The man knocks her to the ground and tells her to stay put. Lara stands up and briefly wonders if he really thought she’d listen to him after everything that had just happened in the span of a few minutes. She’s surrounded, but she can’t stay in one place. She swallows the bile in her throat and closes her eyes and leans against a wall shielding her from their sight. She can do this.

She manages to sneak her way past a few of the men and tries to hide in a small crevice of a broken building. It’s a poor hiding spot, but she has no other option. She tries to calm her breathing but it’s a lost cause. The man from before walks past and she shuts her eyes tightly, already knowing she’s been caught but unwilling to accept the reality of it all. 

He points a gun at her and tells her to get out. He tries to touch her again and fear drives her forward. She tries to knee him in the groin, but she misses and he grabs her again, pushing his body even closer, leans his head in and buries his face in her hair, inhaling her scent. 

The rest happens quickly. She bites his ear and tackles him down. There’s a struggle and Lara isn’t clear on the details but soon enough there’s a gun in her hands, a bullet in his head, and blood splattered across her face.

She can’t tear her eyes away from him as he takes his last few breaths, gasping and sputtering out blood. When he stops moving, Lara lets out a sob and her knees give out. She’s gasping for air and starts to dry heave, wanting to throw up but nothing comes out. She can taste blood on her lips, unsure if it’s hers or his and can only let out another sob at the thought. 

“Oh god.”

She sits back on her knees and looks up. Voices were starting to come closer. She had to get over this fast, had to move on quicker. There isn’t any time to process, only to move forward. If not for her own sake, then for Roth and Sam at least. 

For Roth.

For Sam.

She grabs the gun and starts making her way out of the chaos.

———— 

It’s scary how quickly she gets used to killing. She doesn’t enjoy it, it still makes her feel a little sick, but it’s self-defense, it’s her or them. She stays focused on her goal to get to Roth because if she just focuses on that, she doesn’t have time to think about the dead bodies piling up at her feet.

The radio crackles as she climbs up a ladder.

“Lara, are you there?” Roth’s voice is a blessing.

She stops her climb momentarily to fiddle with the radio.

“Yes!”

“I can see smoke coming from the old ruins, are you okay?”

“Oh god, Roth I’m in trouble. They’re killing people.”

“What? Who?”

So he hadn’t run into them yet. Lucky Roth.

“Men. I don’t know why. I had to kill some of them. I had no choice.” No choice. That’s right. Self-defense. 

“That can’t have been easy.” There’s no hesitation in his voice, no judgement, and Lara’s incredibly thankful for that. 

“It’s scary just how easy it was.” And it only got easier. God, is she turning into one of them already? She shakes her head as she reaches the top of the ladder. No time to process. Forward. “You’ve got to warn the others, Roth.”

“Don’t worry about them right now. You just do whatever it takes to get to me, Lara.”

It’s an impossible feat not to worry about the others, especially Sam. She can’t shake the feeling that Sam in particular is in deep trouble. More of a reason for her to keep going.

“I’ll try.”

It’s quiet, and it almost feels like she’s out of the woods for now. She just had to make her way to Roth and they would figure things out together, just like they always do. After she takes a quick look around, she decides it’s safe enough to take a breather and try to compose herself a little before moving on.

There’s a little clearing by a waterfall that’s partially hidden, so she decides it’s as good a place as any to sit down and gather her thoughts.

———— 

_The thing about nightmares is sooner or later, you wake up. But there's no waking up from this place. Which means I'm really here, I'm really doing these things. No. Don't think about it, Lara. Not now. It won't help._

_I don't know what's happened to the rest of the crew. I hope they're okay. They have to be. They have to be. I don't know what the hell is going on here, but all that matters is that Roth finds a way to get us home._

———— 

Gunfire.

Roth.

Lara runs as fast as she can towards the noises. 

“Roth?!” she shouts, horrified as he comes into view. “Roth!”

A pistol in each hand, a bloody leg, and wolves charging at him. He kills the last one in front of him before he collapses and Lara feels her legs start to move of their own accord again. 

“Roth, I’m coming!”

When she reaches him, he’s pushing himself back to lean against a rock and she wants to cry at the sight of him. “Thank god you’re alive,” she breaths. Even with an injured leg, Roth is a sight for sore eyes. Already she can feel a burst of hope bloom inside of her. Roth is here and in front of her, not just a voice on a radio, and _alive._ She can’t hold in a gasp when she finally looks down to examine the wound on his leg and her instincts kick in quickly as she starts to bandage it as well as she can with what she has.

“That god’s got nothing to do with it,” he groans before turning to her, his breathing beginning to slow. “It’s good to see you too, girl.” 

They share a look and an awkward laugh together, silently acknowledging that they’d escaped death multiple times before now. A simple ‘good to see you’ doesn’t exactly cover it. 

“Sorry, they did a real number on your leg,” Lara tells him. 

As much as she loves Roth—thinks he’s the most important person in her life, really—neither of them had ever really been that great when it came to being vulnerable. They’re both far more tactical people than anything else, and it works wonderfully for them. Roth tried harder to be better at the other stuff when he stepped into a more father-figure role in her life—tried to have the more emotionally draining conversations and moments—but he had always been relieved that Lara had shown to be more like him than he thought, someone that preferred to speak with actions over words. 

“Nah, looks worse than it is.” 

“Have you heard from any of the others?” 

“Nothing.”

For a moment the panic starts to rise again, feels as if the whole island is starting to consume her, trying to take everything from her. Her thoughts fly to Sam and Mathias. It all had to be connected somehow, didn’t it?

Her thoughts get cut off abruptly when she realizes Roth makes an effort to stand.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“The wolves took my food pack. The transmitter from the life boat’s in it. If we don’t get that back, we’re not getting off this bloody island.”

“Yeah, but you need—you need bandages, morphine, antiseptic…”

“Also in the pack.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

She tries to help him to his feet, pulls an arm around her shoulders to lift the weight off his leg, but it doesn’t take too long before she feels the grip on her slacken and the full weight of his body start to press against her small frame. 

“Oh no,” her grip starts to slip, she’s not strong enough to hold him up by herself. “No, no, no, no.” 

He falls to the ground, completely knocked out. 

“Oh, don’t do this to me, you Northern bastard.”

———— 

Roth is alive, and Lara is exhausted but relieved. The trek to and through the wolf cave had been surprisingly easy—she takes a second to wonder when nearly getting her head bit off by a wolf was something she considered to be easy—and she hadn’t wasted a second to get his leg patched up correctly. 

She knows what’s ahead, she knows what Roth is going to ask of her when he wakes up. So, as she waits for that moment, she takes the time to mentally prepare herself to go out there again, to face those _people_ again. She’s restless, so she pulls out her journal again and writes with a hope that penning her thoughts will help put them at ease.

_Thank god for Roth's training. All those treks, all those climbs... It's as if he'd been preparing me for something like this all along._

_It's clear that there are people living here. And they're organized. They're killing and recruiting, but why? It's like some kind of cult. But a cult of what? What do they want? What are they looking for?_

Roth begins to stir, and she puts her journal away. So much for that.

“Roth!” she says and she rushes over to his side to help him get comfortable before settling in next to him. They share another small chuckle. Another opportunity for death to take them had been avoided, and there really isn’t much else they could say. 

“It’s not bad,” Roth mutters as he examines the work she’d done on his leg. “Where does a young lady like you learn to do a thing like that?”

Lara laughs, rolls her eyes at the strange fatherly tone he picks up. “Late shift at the 9 Bells. A wolf’s got nothing on a broken bottle.” 

He shoots her a weak smile, and Lara wishes she could know what he really wants to tell her right then and there. It’s clear that he holds back and instead focuses his attention on what they’re both good at, the practical things. 

“Hey,” he nods at the transmitter lying on her other side, “you got it. Nice work.”

“So, I assume the plan is to take that up to the radio tower?”

The conversation goes as practiced in her head. It’s their best shot at getting a signal, she already knows that. She also knows that Roth isn’t going anywhere with that leg of his. She had even guessed what his reassurances would sound like, gets it right almost word for word.

“You can do it, Lara. After all, you’re a Croft.”

She’s sure those words are going to haunt her one day. 

“I don’t think I’m that kind of Croft,” she tells him. She doesn’t even _want_ to be that kind of Croft. She knows what happens to those kinds of Crofts, knows where they end up.

Dead. Dead and gone and all that’s left are the ones they left behind.

“Sure you are,” he reaches behind him and hands her a climbing axe. “You just don’t know it yet.”

He smiles at her as if she should be proud to be a Croft, but all being a Croft has brought her is pain. She has to look away from him and shut her eyes tightly, can’t bear to see the amount of faith in her that’s pouring out of him. She inhales deeply and tries to focus on what matters. Roth had always given her nothing but love and support, the least she could do is pretend—to _try_ to be the kind of Croft that he remembers so fondly.

“Well let’s hope I’m a fast learner, then.”

And it isn’t as if Lara has never held a climbing axe before, but the weight of it in her hands feels like it crushes her.

———— 

_“Lara, are you there?”_

It takes a second for Lara to regain her footing—a bridge collapsing from just under your feet will do that to you—before she realizes that the voice is coming from the radio.

“Reyes! Did you find Sam?”

 _“We’re still on her trail.”_ It’s not great news, but at least Reyes and the others are okay. Reyes is as good as anyone to have on your side, and she tries to let that thought sink in to help her feel a little more at ease that Sam is still missing. 

“I’m going to try and send an SOS from an old radio tower up here, any tips?”

 _“Hey Lara,”_ Alex chimes in, _“You’re gonna need to find the communications console. It’ll look like a bunch of old switchboards.”_

“Okay, I’ll let you know when I find it.”

She has to hold back a frustrated groan and shake off the nerves. Once she sends out this signal, she can go back to Roth and they can both go look for Sam together if Reyes and the others still haven’t found her by then. 

She has to focus on one thing at a time, and her current focus really needs to be on the men in front of her that are trying to kill her.

———— 

The rain starts to pour a little harder and Lara can’t stop her body from shivering. There’s a campfire the men from before must have been using and Lara takes the opportunity to sit and warm up before she freezes to death. 

It was getting easier for her to kill. She thinks about the climb she made to get up here and how many men she had relentlessly shot down just in the past twenty-four hours. There isn’t an ounce of regret in her; in fact, it shocks her just how little she cared about the people dead anyway, about her growing body count.

She’s beginning to spiral again, her breathing picking up quickly, and something needs to be done before it gets worse.

She grabs Sam’s camcorder, it’s the first thing she sees, hoping that it’ll serve as a nice distraction. 

Reyes and Alex bickering about an electrical problem on the ship, and a picture of Reyes’ daughter. Oh god, her daughter. Reyes needs to get back to her daughter. Lara tightens her grip.. She’ll reach the tower and get the signal out and then rescue will come. It’ll be fine. Reyes will get back to her daughter.

The next video is one of Grim, telling some long-winded story before Roth comes in to interrupt him. She’s sure she’s heard this story at some point, but it’s still endearing enough. 

And then there’s something strange. Roth and Reyes? Had there been something going on with them the whole time?

Lara can’t stop the laugh that comes out. How did she not see that one coming?

She supposes she shouldn't be laughing. Sam had told her on more than one occasion how dense she is when it comes to reading romantic intentions on people. It isn’t exactly like she had much experience in the area herself. It’s never something she craved, she’s very much content with the people in her life already.

Then there’s a quick video of Sam trying to shoot Whitman and Jonah cutting up fish that has Lara scowling at how pretentious Whitman was. But she watches as Sam handles the whole situation calmly and she really can’t stop thinking about her and how wonderful she is at her job, at everything she puts her mind to, really. 

The last video is Sam shooting a conversation with her and Roth. 

_“You’ve got great instincts, girl. You just have to trust them.”_

_“That’s what my father used to say.”_

_“Now there was a man that ran on instinct...for better or worse. He would’ve been so proud of you, Lara.”_

Her stomach twists into knots. Great instincts? Just like her father, she supposes, and that thought does nothing to reassure her. She turns off the camera, not wanting to watch anything else. She doesn’t want to think about her father, no matter how often Roth sings praises about him.

Every time she tries to run from one problem, all she ends up doing is run straight into another one. 

———— 

It’s snowing, _snowing_ , and Lara is climbing a rickety, old radio tower. This place, this god-damn island, isn’t normal. It isn’t just the people—though she’s pretty sure they’re all mad too—it’s the island itself. She sounds crazy, wants to brush it all off, but then she remembers she’s damn near freezing—the coldest she’s ever felt in her _life_ ; she’s not really sure how she isn’t dying from hypothermia at the moment—because it’s _snowing_. 

Her hands shake as she listens to Alex’s instructions and fiddles with the control panel to get a clear signal before broadcasting an SOS. It works, she’s ecstatic, and she thinks that maybe she’s wrong about the island. Maybe she just needs to get some real food, some rest, and to treat however many wounds she’s gathered since she’s been here. She vaguely registers Alex cheering for her—something about Reyes cracking a smile—and finds a rope she can ride down to safety. 

She sets up a fire as a signal to the pilot, and she sees the plane above her. It’s fine. They’re fine. They’ll find Sam and get off this island and this nightmare will be over. 

And then the sky darkens out of nowhere and her breath catches as she watches clouds envelop the plane. Her eyes widen, fire threatening to burst out of her skin, and she wants to scream but nothing comes out. She can only watch in horror as a bolt of lightning strikes the plane and it’s over.

It’s all over. 

It’s heading straight for her.

She runs.

———— 

The pilot. She sees the pilot land somewhere close to her. She has to get to him, maybe he knows something, saw something she didn’t in the sky, something that will explain whatever the fuck she just witnessed. There has to be a reasonable explanation, _has to_. 

Or maybe there isn’t and maybe everything she’s known to be true is a lie.

She’s too late anyway. She watches the cultists surround the pilot and then he’s gone.

She gets no answers.

———— 

_I can't get it out of my head. A storm that came out of nowhere, out of a clear sky, and brought down a plane. It's not rational. You know it's not rational, Lara. There must be some explanation I... I just don't know what it is yet_

———— 

“I’m really glad you moved,” Lara breathes a sigh of relief when she reaches Roth. She had just heard him a few minutes ago on the radio, but seeing him and hearing him are different. He wobbles towards her on a makeshift crutch and puts an arm around her.

“You and me both, girl.”

Most of the plane had landed right where they had previously set up camp. God, they had gotten so incredibly lucky so far—as lucky as one could be on a cursed island that’s filled with murderous cultists. 

How long before their luck runs out?

Roth tries to calm her down, tells her it’s not her fault, but it _is,_ isn’t it? She called him here, led him straight into that bizarre storm and now he’s dead.

_“Mayday! Mayday! This is co-pilot Jessop of aircraft N177A.”_

“Another pilot!” 

Lara tries to reach him, but he doesn’t hear her and she has to set things right, has to save at least _one_ of them. 

“No,” Roth tries to stop her.

“His signal’s just over there.”

“We’ve got our own people to worry about. We’ll need to regroup as soon as they find Sam.”

She wants to scream because does he really think that she doesn’t know that? Does he really think she doesn’t realize that this whole thing is her fault? That she hasn’t, for a single second, stopped thinking about him or Sam or the rest of the crew?

“I can’t just leave him out there alone. I need to get to him.”

She needs to fix her own mess, needs to feel some semblance of control, needs everything to just stop for one fucking second so she can make sense of it all.

Roth grabs her wrist. “Sometimes you’ve got to make sacrifices, Lara. You can’t save everyone.”

She pulls her arm away from him roughly. “I know about sacrifices.” She had sacrificed everything she really wanted for years, had lost so much already. She isn’t about to lose more, not if she could help it.

“No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make, loss is a choice made for you.”

Maybe he’s right, but Lara can’t accept it, has already made up her mind about what she needs to do.

“I can’t _choose_ to let him die, Roth.”

She storms off, and he has no choice but to let her go.

———— 

Alex contacts her through the radio again.

“Any sign of Sam?” she asks the first chance she gets.

_“We’ve tracked her to some old Japanese palace.”_

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

_“Hey, don’t worry, she’s probably just, um, sightseeing.”_

“You’re a terrible liar, Alex. You have to be careful in there. Good luck.”

She recalls the conversation she overheard on the radio earlier between Roth and Reyes. Something about following a group of strange men into some type of city. Her stomach curls and she knows something is off.

This isn’t right. None of this is right.

———— 

She spots the other pilot, captain Jessop, and yells out to him, but it all happens too quickly for her to react. Barrels are being thrown at her and there’s an explosion—the bridge, they blew up the bridge—that knocks her back. The whole thing had been a set-up. They tricked her, and she fell for it. 

“For a child you’ve caused me a great deal of trouble, but you’re just as naive and predictable.”

It couldn’t be...Mathias? 

“Kill her!”

Someone punches her and everything starts to blur together as she struggles to remain conscious. Her luck has finally run out, she’s sure of it. People are screaming—something about...oni? Guardians? There’s growling, but it’s not like anything she’s ever heard before. It sounds...monstrous, almost. More screaming, sounds of blood being spilt, glimpses of gigantic figures in samurai armor.

She can’t hold on anymore, and everything fades.

———— 

She wants to take back everything she had said in the first cave she woke up in.

 _This_ is what true fear must feel like. 

It smells ten times worse than the other cave had and the room is filled with bodies. She gags at the sight, at the smell, at _everything._ It doesn’t help that her wrists tied together and is essentially hanging off the ceiling. At least she isn’t upside-down again. 

Why the _fuck_ did she keep getting into these situations?

What had even happened out there? Whoever it was that killed the cultists...why hadn’t they killed her too?

She shakes her head, tries and fails not to pay attention to the mountain of dead bodies around her and focuses on getting down. The rope around her wrist isn’t too tight and she manages to break free and fall back down to the floor. She’s greeted with an even stronger stench of death and the sight of Captain Jessop’s body looking like it had been mauled.

Then, the growling she heard outside snaps her out of it and all she can think of is how she needs to get out of here as quickly as possible. There’s another sound, as if metal is being dragged across the floor, that echoes through the room. 

She finds an exit to crawl through and gets through it just in time to see... _something_ make its way past her. 

She needs to get out. _Now._

She climbs and crawls her way through the building and lands in a place that’s familiar, if not unwelcome.

“I _hate_ tombs,” she says to herself. It’s nowhere near as horrifying as the room she had found herself in, but there’s an atmosphere that’s somehow even harder to shake off. It’s unnerving and Lara feels the bile start to make her way up her throat before she swallows it back down.

But when she turns around, she’s filled with a rush of excitement at what she finds in front of her.

“A Sun Queen and her stormguard.” She looks up at the statues adoring the edges of the tomb and can’t help but feel amazed at where she must be.

She walks up to the tomb and traces the carvings on the side.

“Himiko. The first Sun Queen! This _is_ Yamatai.”

She had her suspicions, but this confirmed everything. She had really found Yamatai, and it ended up being a goddamn death trap.

She pushes open the tomb because she has to see for herself.

“And you’re really here...and really, really dead.”

She forgets about her situation for a second and takes a moment to explore the murals and markings that surround the tomb, tries to decipher what it all means. Something about a fire ritual and transferring power and how she chose a successor. Lara puts the pieces together slowly, and is elated at her discovery.

Shouts from the cultists bring her back to reality.

———— 

One second she’s fighting off men. Human men. A bit mad, but still men.

The next, the figure she sees from earlier barrels through the door like it’s nothing and she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance against...whatever that thing is. 

It couldn’t be...the stormguard?

There’s no time to talk herself out of the idea because it picks up one of the cultists and throws him at her and the only thing she can do is run for her life.

———— 

She lands at the bottom of a small waterfall and as she finds the energy to crawl back to land, she tries to process everything from the last day or two—she’s lost track of how long they’ve been on the island. Her body gives out for a second and she lets herself lie there, lets herself rest, for once. 

That didn’t just happen. That couldn’t have just happened.

_“Hello? Hello?”_

“Sam!”

Her frantic cries pierce through the air and slam right into Lara’s chest and she scrambles to grab the radio.

“ _Hello?”_

“Sam, it’s Lara!”

“ _Oh, oh god, Lara...it’s good to hear your voice.”_

She’s alive. Thank fuck she’s alive.

“Yours too, Sam.” She couldn’t even begin to articulate how nice it was to hear her voice, to explain to her just how worried she’d been this whole time, how little she left her thoughts. “Is the rest of the crew with you?” 

_“N-no. I just managed to steal this radio off a guard.”_

She sounds like she’s in tears and Lara clenches her fist in anger. They had done something to her. She’s never heard Sam like this, so afraid, so frantic. A guard? They’re keeping her somewhere. Her heart sinks at the thought that she’s alone and terrified and stuck with those bloody cultists out there.

“A guard?”

_“I’ve been kidnapped.”_

“What? Where are you?”

_“I don’t know...some old Japanese palace. They keep talking about a ‘fire ritual.’ Lara, I’m fucking terrified.”_

Me too, she wants to tell her, but she can’t say that. What can she say though? She needs to say something, _anything_ , because Sam is telling her she’s terrified in a shaky voice that she’s never heard Sam use before and all Lara can do is sit there and try to control her breaths, try to stop the tears that threaten to fall.

“ _Shit, someone’s coming. I’ve got to hide this thing.”_

“Sam...Sam!”

No answer. 

_Fuck._

Fire ritual. The mural.

It _has_ to be connected. 

Roth says something about heading down to the palace, about how the others are there too.

So she steels herself, tears all but gone, and sets off, determined.

———— 

_Just when I thought things couldn't get worse. What were those things in the monastery? They were dressed like the Stormguard, and the sounds they made, almost... inhuman. Shit, just listen to yourself, Lara. You sound like dad._

_It's like they're the remnants of some lost civilization. Okay, now I really sound like dad. All I know is they killed those men, and I have a feeling they wouldn't hesitate to kill me too._

_But I can't think about this now. Sam's in trouble and I've got to get her back. She's counting on me._

———— 

_“Oh god, that was close.”_

Lara can’t grab the radio fast enough.

_“Are you there?”_

“I’m here, Sam. Are you okay?”

Lara’s calmer this time. Sam’s terrified voice doesn’t throw her off as much, and she’s determined to be the person she needs—someone steady, someone who’s capable of doing something right for once. She clutches the radio tightly in one hand as she takes a good look out towards where Sam must be. 

_“What do they want with me, Lara? A fire ritual? This is so fucked up.”_

“Listen, I’m coming to get you. I’m going to get you out of there!”

She paces back and forth, unable to keep her body still.

_“Please, please help me, Lara.”_

She shuts her eyes and breaths in deep. Calm. Steady. Determined. “I promise. I promise, Sam.”

She wants to go back to that night, years ago, where they’d stayed up curled against each other, where nothing else mattered other than being there for each other, where Lara could reach out and hold on and not fear for her life, where Sam was right there in her arms, staring at her with stars in her eyes.

There’s a commotion on the radio. 

“Sam!? Sam!?”

She yells out to her, but it does nothing. The guards have found her, taken away her only form of communication with her, and Lara is seething.

“Stay away from her, you bastards! Stay away!”

It cuts off, and the adrenaline surges through her.

“Fuck!” she paces back and forth, the bravado from earlier disappearing within seconds, fear and doubt creeping in instead. She needs to get to Sam, and to do that she has to keep moving, has to become a person that has no room for any type of hesitation. “Okay…” she mutters to herself, determined.

She can’t lose Sam. She won’t let it happen.

———— 

Death greets her in the form of cracking glass underneath her back and a fall that will likely take her breath away before she even hits the ground. But she refuses to entertain death—as if she could steer it off course through the power of sheer will—and finds a way because she always finds a way, doesn’t she? There’s a parachute hanging above her, and she’s not even sure she’s really thinking it all through, trusting her body to move on its own as if it knows the answer. 

And it does, only the solution ends up being far more painful than she anticipated.

The glass breaks and she falls, but she manages to get the parachute deployed and she survives, barely. A tree breaks her fall and she feels the wound on her left side open up and soon there’s a searing pain that starts from there and extends from head to toe. She takes a few steps before tripping over a branch and collapsing on her knees, the pain becoming nearly unbearable. There’s a ringing in her ears that hasn’t subsided yet and she still can’t quite get her footing right.

She looks up and sees some sort of shanty town and once she gets further down—a little ungracefully, but she gets the job done—she spots a helicopter wreckage not too far from her. 

“Might be some supplies on board,” she mutters to herself, her breathing becoming ragged.

———— 

_No room for hesitation._

WIth that thought, she presses the heated tip of the arrow to her wound and prays that no one is around to hear her shout—to hear her rip her vocal chords apart with just how loud she screams. She bites back tears and tries to hold back her sobs, wishing and praying that this would be the worst of it, that after this, everything would be smooth sailing because she’s not sure how much more of _this_ she could take.

Everyone is counting on her. _Sam_ is counting on her.

She has no choice but to go on.

“Roth, can you hear me?” she asks into the radio. “Roth?”

_“Lara, are you okay?”_

She wants to laugh. “I’m fine.”

_“You don’t sound fine to me.”_

“I’m fine, Roth.”

_“Where are you, girl?”_

“I’m in some kind of shanty town, near the fortified palace.”

_“I’m still coming down the hill. How did you get there so fast?”_

“Long story.”

Long story indeed.

———— 

“Get yer hands off me, ya bloody bastards!”

“Oh my god, Grim!”

Her legs can’t carry her fast enough towards the sound of his voice. There are a few of the Solarii—what the group of cultists called themselves, according to some strange documents she’d found littered through the shanty town—chasing him, but he makes quick work of them. 

The nerves start to ease when she has a clear view of him. She knows Roth is behind her somewhere making his way towards them, but the sight of Grim makes her feel significantly less lonely. She keeps trying to put different pieces of herself together and meld them into something she isn’t sure she could be, but Grim grins down at her, and she lets her facade fall for a second as she fades back into the security of someone else’s capable presence. 

“Lara, up here!” he shouts down at her from atop one of the structures. 

“Grim, you escaped!”

“They couldn’t hold me. Get up here, we need to get the others.”

She sighs in relief and begins to climb up towards him, but the relief is short-lived. The Solarii appear out of nowhere and soon she’s ducking behind cover from dynamite and she pulls out her weapons and does what she’s been surprisingly good at—surviving in this hellscape.

When the fight is over, the ladder is gone and she feels her safety net slip away.

“Lara, you’re alive!” He seems shocked, and if the Lara from a week ago had seen herself now, she'd be shocked too.

“Just barely.” If only Grim knew. She’d tell him everything after all this, couldn’t wait to, really. For once, she could be the one telling him stories. They just needed to get out of here, alive. “Where are the others?”

“Still locked up inside, but I know where they are. Get up here and we’ll get em out together.”

“I can’t climb up there from here.”

She has to go around from the other side. It looks easy enough. All she has to do is reach Grim, and then they can rescue the others, rescue Sam. She’ll reach Grim, regroup with Roth, and there’s no better duo than the two of them. Lara’s in safe hands.

She just has to reach Grim.

———— 

Grim is dead.

He saved her.

Grim is dead.

She didn’t even get to say goodbye.

Grim is dead.

He gave her a fighting chance.

Grim is dead.

She doesn’t care about chances.

Grim is dead.

They’ll pay.

———— 

She’s lucky the Solarii have horrible aim and that Roth is the exact opposite. She watches the two men fall across from her as she hangs off the edge of a cliff and it’s not long before she hears Roth’s voice through the radio.

_“I’ve got you covered, girl. You’re clear to climb up.”_

“Thank god.” Another close call. She sees the glint from his rifle across the way and she knows she has to tell him. They were best friends, he needs to know, but Lara isn’t sure she can say it out loud, if she can tell him without losing herself in the reality of it all. “Roth…”

_“Yeah?”_

“Grim’s dead.” He doesn’t respond, so Lara keeps going. “They tried to use him as leverage to make me surrender, but he wouldn’t let them.”

There’s a long silence on the other end, and Lara is glad for once that she can’t see Roth’s face. She isn’t sure she could look at him without breaking. 

_“Grim you...you stubborn bastard,”_ he says softly.

“I’m so sorry Roth.”

_“No...don’t be sorry, Lara. Just make it count. We’ll raise a glass to the old man when we get out of here.”_

Right. Make it count.

For Roth. 

For Grim.

———— 

WIth Roth’s help, she gets into some type of cavern that she hopes leads into the palace itself, but she soon figures out it doesn’t matter because she hears a familiar voice.

“My brothers, listen to me now.” 

Mathias.

Her blood boils.

“Out in the world, we were nothing.”

She hides up against a wall, glances out long enough to make out a large group of men, too large for her to deal with on her own. She inhales deeply and her mind scrambles to come up with a plan.

“But here...here, we are the Solarii,” she moves to get in closer, “the sun Queen’s children. She brought us here for a reason.”

His loud, booming voice bounces off the walls of the cavern and Lara grips her bow even tighter.

“I know you want your freedom. I know you want to escape this place.” She glances out again and there are far more men than she initially thought. “But to do so, we must release our Queen.” What is he talking about? “Like us, she is a prisoner.” 

She looks up at Mathias—she _knew_ he was bad news when she met him—addressing the crowd and then her breath gets caught in her throat.

“Sam!” she hisses. 

Her eyes grow big and her hands ache from how tightly she grips her bow. Sam is tied up and gagged against a broken tree trunk, surrounded by candles, and the imagery looks frighteningly familiar. _The fire ritual. They’re going to set her on fire._

“If we can free her, we free ourselves!” Mathias shouts.

No. No, no, no, no.

No.

Lara’s eyes dart back and forth, trying to come up with a way to save her, to get her free, but there are far too many of them. She can’t see a plausible solution. She can’t come up with _a single damn thing_. 

She can only stare in horror, listen to the way her breath starts to grow ragged, feel the way her heart races.

“This girl, she carries the blood of this land. She could be the key. The Ritual of Flames will show us the truth!”

Sam’s struggles and muffled shouts go ignored by Mathias as she continues his speech. Lara has to do something. But what? _What?_

“Himiko, you are the first and the last. Speak to us now!”

A man walks forward with a torch, stops at Sam’s feet, and Lara doesn’t know what she’s doing.

She runs out, notches an arrow, pulls back, and shoots.

The arrow goes straight through the man’s head, and Lara knows it was a dumb move, a completely irrational one, but she can’t seem to find a single drop of regret. She quickly notches another arrow, ready to shoot again, but she’s tackled down faster than she can aim. She doesn’t hear a thing as they pummel her, all she cares about is that she’s failed, all she can even think about is the image of Sam tied up there, afraid and alone.

Mathias stops them and she’s stripped of her weapons before being dragged across the cavern floor. She’s pushed down onto her knees and he grabs her by the ponytail to make her look up at him

“Every creature in nature will turn and fight when its very survival is at stake. So don’t think I don’t understand you, girl. I’ve just been doing this a lot longer.”

She glares up at him, it’s the closest look she’s ever been to him, and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt more hatred for a man.

He starts to address the crowd of men again, but she doesn’t listen. All she can hear are Sam’s muffled screams and she has to hold back tears. She’d rather they beat her to death than this, than to sit her right in front of Sam and be able to do nothing, to sit and watch as they kill her.

“Sam!” She screams out. It’s the cruelest thing she’s ever had to experience.

Mathias drops the torch on the bundle of wood below her.

“No, no, no, Sam!” 

Sam’s going to die, and it’ll be all her fault.

“I’m sorry. I”m so sorry,” her voice cracks. She’s not even sure Sam can hear her.

Sam’s going to die.

“Just look at me...look at me, okay?”

And she does, she looks at her, tears in her eyes and frightened beyond belief. Sam’s going to die and Lara tries her best to comfort her in her last moments, to reassure her that she’d fix this, even if time was quickly running out. She just needs Sam to look at her, one last time.

A strong wind comes through, the fire is gone, and Sam is alive.

Sam is alive.

What had just happened?

Sam’s legs give out and she sinks down against the trunk. Lara tries to get her to look her way again, but she’s passed out and she wants to cry again. 

“She’s...she’s the one,” Mathias says in disbelief.

Lara can’t take her eyes off of Sam, wants to commit every piece of her to memory—as if it already wasn’t—because she’s not sure this is real. Maybe they had killed her when she jumped out and this was all a dream, maybe her delusions had finally started to get the best of her. But it’s real, it has to be real. Sam is real and alive and in front of her and _she can still save her._

There’s no time to process _how_ , there’s only time to figure out how she can move forward, how she can fix everything so Sam will _never_ have to go through something like that again. 

“Take her to the throne room,” Mathias commands before turning to look her in the eye again. “Your fight is over, creature.”

Two men drag her away and she initially barely has the strength to struggle, but as soon as she sees an opening she quickly grabs it, kicking and shoving her way out of their grasps, grabbing her bow in time before jumping off into blood stained waters to get away.

She’s immune to the horrid smell by now.

———— 

_Madness. That's what this place is. Mathias thinks Himiko's spirit is keeping us here. That's not possible... it's not possible. But he's so beyond crazy that maybe he's come right back round to some kind of sane._

_The helicopter isn't our way off. You know that, Lara - in your gut. I have to warn the others. If we board it, we're dead._

———— 

“Keep it up you son of a bitch. When I get outta here, I’m gonna shove one of those arrows right up your ass.”

Lara crouches closer and grins at the sound of Reyes’ voice. There aren’t as many men this time around, so Lara makes quick work of them, adrenaline still pumping through her veins. They’re alive, Reyes, Alex, and Jonah are alive. Sam is alive. She can still save them.

The three of them cheer when she walks up to them, ecstatic, but Lara can’t help but feel guilt at the sight of them up there, trapped in some sort of makeshift cage hung above her. It’s her fault they’re there, but she’ll fix it. They’re counting on her to fix it.

“That was bad-ass, Lara! How the hell did you get in here?” Alex grins down at her.

“I had some help.”

“Grim?” Reyes asks hopefully.

“Yes…” She looks down at her feet, takes a few breaths to compose herself. “He didn’t make it…”

Disbelief paints over their faces and Reyes turns away from her.

“Shit!” 

“I didn’t think anything could take that guy down,” Jonah says, and Lara doesn’t want to let the grief overcome her so she tries to shift the conversation. They would grieve after. It’s the only way.

“He went out swinging, gave me a chance to get to you.” Make it count. Lara would make it count. “Look, there’s a rescue helicopter on its way. I know they’re keeping Sam separately. Have you seen Whitman?”

“Guess he didn’t make it to the guest rooms.” 

“Mr. Showbiz probably weaseled an upgrade.”

Quips from Reyes and Alex. Her disdain for Whitman is obviously shared.

“We’ll find him, and Sam too.”

And Jonah, too nice for his own good.

She’ll get them off this island, all of them.

———— 

The fire is spreading quickly and Lara knows she needs to find Sam and Whitman and get the hell out of there as fast as she can. But there’s a thought that pokes at her as she passes through a room filled with pictures and documents and journals—a thought that tells her they can’t leave, that getting on that helicopter will be suicide. So she stops and tries to find an answer, figure out what Mathias is thinking because maybe he’s onto something.

“No one leaves…” she reads the words painted on the wall. “That’s what I heard in Japanese before the plane crashed.”

There’s no time, she can feel the fire spreading, and she still hasn’t found Sam. She sees more research on the ritual from Himiko’s tomb, and groans in frustration before taking a map off of the wall and running off.

Something is keeping them here and she needs to figure out what.

———— 

“Lara, you’re alive.”

Whitman, of all people, is who she finds instead of Sam. 

“So are you…” He doesn’t look at all rattled by everything around him, doesn’t even look like he’s been struggling out on the island. “I mean, are you okay? What happened?”

“Once they stopped seeing me as a threat, they let me move about almost freely!”

Of course Whitman wasn’t a threat, he doesn’t have the guts to try anything. She narrows her eyes at him. “Did you know the others were captured?”

“Yes, yes. Sam’s in there.” That’s all Lara needs to hear before rolling her eyes and walking away. She needs to get to Sam. Whitman could stay on this godforsaken island with the Solarii if he got along with them so well. “But I couldn’t free her without a weapon,” he tries to stop her, to justify leaving her friends out to die while he only looked out for himself. “These Solarii are an anthropological marvel, Lara!”

“They’re insane murderers, Dr. Whitman! We need to get our people out of here.”

“Of course, of course. I’ll keep a look out here...you...you call me when it’s safe.”

She doesn’t trust him, but Sam is waiting for her. She can deal with him after she makes sure Sam is safe and away from the hands of the Solarii. She nearly lost her once, she isn’t going to let her slip through her fingers again.

———— 

“I don’t think you understand. You have been chosen, Samantha. This is a great honor for you, for all of us.”

She gets in closer, hides behind a pillar and keeps a tight grip on her bow. She can save her this time. She _will_ save her this time.

“Some were beginning to doubt we’d ever find you, but here you are.”

She sees him, Mathias, and another man standing in front of Sam. She clenches her teeth and has to hold back from doing something ridiculous again. So, she waits and listens and thinks of all the ways she can make Mathias pay.

“Please,” Sam begs, “I know you think I’m something special, but I’m not. I don’t want to be chosen.”

“This is not about what you want. It’s about what you are. Himiko’s blood runs in your veins. I think you know this Samantha.”

“You’re insane, Mathias. Why are you doing this?”

“You’re searching for logic and reason where there is none. I made the same mistake once, back when I thought ships could reach us and planes wouldn’t fall from the sky.” Lara gulps, fearing the worst for when rescue comes. She knows he’s right, she just doesn’t know _why._

“I just want to go home.”

He grabs her by the neck and Lara nearly jumps out then and there. “So do I, girl. I’ve waited years for this moment.” She starts to gasp for air; Lara bites her lip and her whole body shakes from holding back the urge to act. She has to be smart and stay calm. “I’ve given my life!” He shouts before he shoves her to the ground.. “Don’t you think I’ve tried to get away from here? From this place? We are all trapped here, but you Samantha, you have the power to release us! Many have given up their souls willingly for this gift.”

It doesn’t make any sense. None of it made any sense. What did he need Sam for? How does Sam fit into the whole puzzle?

She shelves the thought, and focuses on getting to Sam. It isn’t long before Mathias leaves and there’s only one man standing between her and Sam. It’s a golden opportunity and she does nothing but take advantage of it, stepping out and quickly shooting an arrow through his chest.

Sam’s head darts up and she scrambles to her feet at the sight. “Lara! Oh my god, you’re here.” She runs to her and Lara breathes a sigh of relief when their arms wrap around each other, Sam’s grip tighter than it ever has been—her own grip probably just as tight. “I was beginning to think I was going crazy.”

Lara inhales deeply, takes a second to affirm to herself that, yes, this is real, Sam is alive and in her arms. A second is all she has, and she embraces it with everything she has left. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” they rock back and forth together, and Lara has to will herself away from the moment. “It’s going to be okay.” She opens her eyes and Sam is crying, but there isn’t any time for comfort, unfortunately. That will come later, she promises herself.

“My weapons!” Lara leans down and takes back what’s hers.

“How are we ever going to get out of here?” She looks up at Sam arms folded across her chest protectively, who stares back at her with a raised eyebrow as she readies her gear. She doesn’t want Sam to see this side of her, a side of her that she was beginning to become afraid of herself. 

But she’ll gladly embrace it, walk into this new version of herself, if it means the people she cares about are safe, if it means Sam is safe.

“We need to leave before he comes back.”

She stands up and grabs Sam’s hand to pull her along, squeezes it gently in an attempt to reassure her. They’d talk after all this, when everything is settled and they’re not in a rush to escape murderous cultists. 

Whitman doesn’t answer her calls and she nearly bursts with fury. She refuses to let him be the reason she fails again, to let anything at all get in the way of getting to safety. Lara almost wants to leave him behind, but she isn’t that cruel. That thread of humanity has to remain in check if she ever wants to separate herself from those cultists. Sam follows her closely, her hand gripping hers tightly.

She wouldn’t let her go. Not this time.

But then she has to shove Sam backwards, tells her to run as Mathias and his men charging at them out of nowhere, and Lara is willing to bet her life that Whitman is not as innocent as he seems.

She tries to hold them back, fires at them with an old shotgun.

“Lara! Lara!” 

She tries to catch up to her, but the building begins to fall apart, explosions getting entirely too close to them, and they’re separated again.

“Keep going Sam!” she screams, “I’ll find another way out!”

The Solarii find her and for the first time, she isn’t afraid of them. 

———— 

“Ah shit, she’s got a grenade launcher. Run!”

“That’s right, run, you bastards!”

It’s exhilarating, she has to admit, the amount of anger and _joy_ that runs through her veins at the sight of them scampering away like frightened children the closer she gets. There isn’t any time for her to feel anything other than the pure adrenaline that rushes through her, to feel free, even in the face of danger. 

“I’m coming for you all!” she screams, wanting them all to hear her, to _know_ that they’ll all pay for what they did to the crew, to the man whose face she never got to see, to Grim, to Sam. They’ll fucking pay. 

She spots Sam on the ground as she makes her way through atop a burning building, watches as they try to corner her. She knows they won’t hurt her, knows they _need_ her for _something_ , but they can’t take her again. No, not when she just got her back.

“Sam! Run!” Lara shouts, and is filled with pride when she hears that she’s gotten away. 

Good. Lara will deal with them now. 

“You’re not stopping me!” she yells as she takes out more men at the gate, plows through them all with no remorse.

“Lara!” Sam’s voice cries out. “Lara! Climb over, come on!” 

She runs over to her, wants to reach out through the gap in the gap to wipe the tears on her face, wipe away the desperation she hears in her voice. 

But she has to remain steady, calm, _level-headed_. 

“Head for Roth, I’ll follow. And Sam, don’t get on the helicopter.” Sam shakes her head in disbelief, her mouth drops and Lara can tell she wants to protest, wants to fight back like she always does. “Just trust me, please trust me!”

Lara takes a few steps back, not wanting to break eye contact with Sam until she’s sure she understands her. 

“Go!” Lara shouts, watching as Sam hesitates for a few seconds—she can tell there’s more she wants to say—before running off.

Lara lets out a long exhale before turning around.

———— 

“Roth, we have to land! We have to land or the storms are going to crash us.” Out the window, she sees the others fighting off the Solarii, sees Sam trying to wave them down. “We can’t leave.”

They’re going to die if they stay in the air. 

“We have to land!” she shouts at the pilot. He argues with her, tries to tell her that the weather won’t allow it. She looks back at Roth, but he only stares back with a look of defeat. She shakes her head, pulls Roth’s gung out of its holster, and points it at the pilot.

“Do it!” she screams. 

“She’ll pull apart!”

She cocks the gun. “Now!”

“Fuck! You’re crazy!” 

She doesn’t think she can argue with that.

———— 

She’s gasping for air. Her ears are ringing, can barely open her eyes, and feels Roth’s arms wrapped around her, dragging her across the floor.

The helicopter crashed.

He’s yelling something at her, she’s not sure what, but he seems frantic and there’s another rumble—an explosion?—before she feels her body hit the ground again. She’s still trying to catch her breath as Roth pulls her up, her legs refusing to cooperate. Her body slumps against his, arms hanging loosely around his neck as he keeps her upright, and she tries to steady herself but nothing seems to work the way she wants it to. She keeps coughing, is barely able to open her eyes just enough to see movement behind him.

“It’s them!” she rasps out.

He shifts her in his arms and turns them around. All she hears are shots being fired and her body can’t wake up fast enough, still relying on the steady arms of Roth to keep her up.

It’s too much, she can’t do anything.

There are more shots, more footsteps, shouts and grunts and groans.

Her eyes finally open clearly enough to see. She’s being twisted back around and there’s a horrible sound that pierces her ears, one that sounds like a blade piercing skin, like Roth’s scream, like death greeting him hello.

His arms fall away from her and she falls, eyes wide and the rest of her body unmoving, and she can only stare up at the pain on his face before he turns back around to finish them off.

“Roth!” she screams and watches as he falls next to her. 

This can’t be happening. Lara refuses to admit it. Roth is untouchable, he always has been. Roth always has her back. Always. It doesn’t end here. It can’t. It can’t. It can’t.

“I can’t do this without you,” she cries.

She can’t.

She can’t.

She can’t.

“I’m sorry, Lara. I”m sorry.” She crawls to him, tries to convince herself this isn’t happening, that the nightmare will end in a few seconds. “You can do this.”

He looks up at her one last time.

“You’re a Croft.”

She knew those words would come back to haunt her one day.

———— 

Reyes is yelling at her, Sam is holding her, defending her, and Lara feels nothing.

———— 

They send him off, give him a proper burial, as best they can with what they have. Sam never leaves her side. Her hands wrap around her arm tight, but Lara doesn’t move to reciprocate, doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s there for a while, but she appreciates it all the same.

Sam knows, she always knows. 

Reyes comes up with another plan, something about fixing up a boat on the beach. It all rings hollow inside her. She tries to tell them it won’t work, that they don’t understand, that something won’t let them leave. Reyes doesn’t listen and walks away. Lara doesn’t have the energy to convince her not to. Jonah tells her to trust her instincts—that they’re a strength. 

Everyone keeps telling her to trust her instincts. Fuck her instincts.

Sam’s hands slide down her arm and she uses both her hands to hold on to Lara’s, saying nothing. Jonah and Alex follow Reyes and then it’s just the two of them—Lara standing in front of Sam, a lifeline connected to her hand. 

Sam moves to hold her other hand, squeezes lightly and breaks her silence. “You know where we’ll be. Come down when you’re ready, we won’t go anywhere without you.”

Sam had always been good at that, knowing when she needed space and when she needed comfort. She pulls her into a hug, and Lara returns it half heartedly, any energy she had completely gone. 

Lara pulls out one of her pistols—now that she had Roth’s she didn’t need the other one—and hands it to Sam. She speaks to her for the first time since Roth’s death. “Keep this close.” 

When she’s alone, she pulls out a note she’d found on Roth before they’d sent him off.

She’s not sure how long she cries for.

———— 

_Lara, I'm sorry. I got you into this mess. I made a promise to your father. The last time I saw him, I swore I would look after you, keep you out of trouble. And what did I do? I put you right in the thick of it. Now you're the one looking after me._

_You know, you're just like your father. He was smarter, wiser, and stronger than anyone I knew. And he never gave up, no matter how tough things got. I worry about you, but I know if there's anyone who can survive this place, it's Lara Croft._

_Whatever happens, I want you to know that I loved you like the daughter I never had. I'm proud of you._

———— 

_Don’t be sorry, just make it count._

Make it count. 

She thinks about it all, about the storms and comes to a conclusion that they must be linked to the Sun Queen—Jonah had told her that they couldn’t use logic and reason to understand the island and she thinks he’s right. The Stormguard—that’s what those things were, weren’t they?—they’re protecting something in the ritual chamber. It must be what she’s looking for, it must have the key to getting off the island.

She knows Reyes and the others had come up with some plan, but Lara forms her own and decides that she’ll ask for forgiveness another time. 

———— 

_Tears won't bring me back, girl. That's what Roth would've said. I just can't believe he's gone, no more stories about my parents, no more mountain climbs. God, I wish they'd killed me instead._

_But they didn't. I'm here, I'm alive and I'm certain that no boat or plane is going to get us off this island, at least not yet. I know the answer has something to do with Himiko and that monastery. I have to do something, I have to stop this._

———— 

_“Lara, are you there? Alex said that you’re on your way down?”_

Lara pulls out her radio, relieved to hear Sam’s voice. She really should’ve just headed down with them. The trek back by herself is proving to be far more difficult than she thought it’d be, but she supposes that time by herself is what she needed. She’s determined, now more than ever, to figure out the truth about the island, about Mathias. Nothing is going to stop her.

For Grim.

For Roth.

“I should be there soon...I need to tell you something.” 

She needs to get it off her chest, needs to verbalize it to make sure she’s not completely insane. Sam will understand, she’s the only one she trusts enough to tell her plan to. 

_“What’s going on?”_

“I don’t think we can leave this island. Something is keeping us here. I have to go back to the monastery.”

_“Are you sure?”_

“Yes Sam. I need you to keep this to yourself for now. I’m going to help Reyes fix that boat, but then I’m taking it inland.”

_“Lara...I don’t know about this…”_

“Just trust me, It’s the only way.”

She knows that Sam will. 

_“Alright...you be careful.”_

———— 

“Sam!” 

She had known Sam would be here, was alive and safe, but seeing her sends a wave of relief through her regardless. As much as Lara tried to stick to logic and reason, when it came to Sam, every way her body responded had always felt irrational. 

“I’m here,” Lara breaths, aware that there are others in the vicinity, but walks straight into Sam’s arms anyway. 

“Lara!” Sam happily pulls her in and this time, Lara takes a longer moment to hold her, lets herself indulge in how warm Sam feels against her, at how everything slows down and speeds up all at once. 

Jonah comes over and wraps his arms around the both of them. They share a laugh, but the moment is over and Lara falls back into reality. 

It’s like she’s splashed with cold water. Sam feels like her lifeline, now more than ever, and she recognizes a strange ache that threatens to take over whenever she sees her. She recognized it a long time ago, way before Yamatai, if she’s being honest with herself, but now isn’t the time to put it into words or try and make sense of it all.

Sam is alive, that’s all that matters.

———— 

Shots are being fired and Dr. Whitman unfortunately ends up in their camp again. He cries for help, says something ridiculous about scaring them off—as if Whitman could frighten anything. He talks about running for miles, but he looks every bit the same pretentious scholar they left him. 

Nothing about his story makes sense. The last she’d seen him, he was telling her to run and Mathias was by his side, and yet he’s here? Alive? How? He’d come firing shots into the distance but there was absolutely no sign of anyone else on the beach. He said he’d been running, but he hasn’t even broken a sweat.

Lara has no reason to trust him, especially with Sam. 

Reyes and Jonah try to diffuse the situation, but all it does is agitate her further. 

But they’re right, fighting amongst themselves helps no one, and Lara has no choice but to trust Sam in their hands as she goes after Alex.

———— 

She never thought she’d be back on the Endurance. 

So much has happened, so much has changed. She can’t help but stop as she passes by her room, a corpse of what it used to be. Alex is out there somewhere waiting for her, but her body moves of its own accord, possessed by some feeling of nostalgia. 

There’s a picture of her and Sam on the inside of her locker from graduation. Of all the things to survive the wreck, she’s pleasantly surprised this did and decides to take it with her. When she shuts the locker door, she’s momentarily stunned at the sight that greets her. She stares back at a reflection that she hardly recognizes—feels like in two days she’s managed to age ten years. 

She tears her eyes away from the jarring sight, from the dirt and scars that paint her face, and spots a piece of paper will familiar handwriting.

A page ripped out of Sam’s diary. What are the chances?

She skims it quickly before slipping back into the pages of her journal. Something about adventures, cutting loose, and some weirdly unsettling comment about meeting cute guys—she almost wants to laugh at that one. 

Some adventure this turned out to be.

———— 

Alex shoves the tools at her, tells her to go. 

She should’ve gotten here earlier, shouldn’t have stopped by her room, should’ve been faster, should’ve been _better._

Everything feels heavy, and she shakes her head at him slowly, denial rushing through her veins. He tells her again, and she knows she’s running out of time—knows that she’s failed someone else once again. Time, she keeps running out of time. He dies, or they both die. It should be an easy choice, rationally. 

_Sacrifice is a choice you make, loss is a choice made for you._

Is this what Roth meant? Because this doesn’t feel like much of a choice. What it feels like, instead, is a special kind of cruel punishment, a doorway to a lifetime of _what-ifs._

At least this time she gets to say goodbye.

———— 

Answers. She needs answers. 

Some old logbooks she finds in the cliffside bunker point to a tomb of a general by the coast that might have some information on the storms that plague the island. It’s the closest thing to a lead that she’s found. She’s tired of fighting, of _surviving_ , of watching the people she cares about die one by one. She needs it all to stop, for her own sanity. Every time she gets close to something, some type of answer, it falls just out of reach and someone else pays for her ineptitude. 

People are counting on her, there is no stopping. 

Just keep going.

For Alex.

For Grim.

For Roth.

———— 

From afar, Lara watches Sam curiously as she walks along the beach towards them, her limbs screaming at her to let them rest even if just for a second. Sam is hunched over, hands in her face, and it looks like she’d been crying again. Whitman, of all people, is comforting her. He sits close by her side, a hand on her knee, and Lara wants to run over and tell him to keep his hands off of her. 

But she’s tired. So tired. She’s not ready for the conversation that’s about to be had.

Reyes’ eyes widen when she spots her, the rest of the crew takes another second to even register that she’s come back.

When Sam looks up, Lara can barely look her in the eye. 

“Lara!” She stands up immediately and limps towards her. Lara takes a second to herself, is too tired to not let herself indulge, and stares. She thinks about the night that Sam reached out to her when she had been acting strange, that night she’d finally begun to let her walls down. She remembers it so fondly, the way Sam knew, still knows, exactly what her body needed before she even did.

She wonders if Sam would do it again, would let her fall against her and cry the rest of the night.

But there are too many eyes on them, and Sam senses something strange and keeps her distance. Lara tears her eyes away and sits down instead.

How silly of her to think she could have something like that, could have selfishly have Sam all to herself.

“When we heard the explosion we thought…” Whitman explains. 

Oh.

She spares another glance up at Sam. They thought they’d lost her, _Sam_ thought she’d died, and Lara can’t help but feel the guilt pour over her. She thought she could fix things, but nothing had gone to plan; everything she tried to do had failed.

Sam looks around, eyes hopeful for a second before her expression darkens again. “Alex?”

She doesn’t expect the pang in her chest to hit so hard. 

“He was still on the ship.”

For a moment she thinks Sam hates her, resents her for everything that’s happened, but Sam swallows deeply and moves to sit next to her. She doesn’t look at her as she hesitantly puts an arm around her back, gently pulls her in and—it’s too much. Lara stiffens, but Sam doesn’t move, only lightens her grip and stays rooted by her side.

“Seems anyone caught with you has a pretty low survival rate.” Reyes glares at her. Lara can’t find it in her to be mad—because she’s right, isn’t she? The people around her keep dying.

How many more people would she have to watch die?

“Better keep your distance then,” is all Lara can say back. She knows Reyes is upset, still grieving. She doesn’t hold it against her.

Sam moves her other hand to rest on her elbow, and Lara finally feels herself relax a little. Every instinct in her tells her to lean in, to let herself rest for a minute. She sighs and sinks down into the sand, watching Jonah cook the fish, and Sam sinks down next to her, refusing to leave her side. 

Sam. At least she still has Sam. 

They eat in relative silence, and when they’re done, Lara pulls out the logbook she’d found earlier to see if she could pinpoint where exactly the tomb was located. 

The others engage in a short conversation that eventually leads to one about fixing up the boat and leaving the island. Lara tries to tell them again, feels Sam’s concerned stare as she does, that they can’t leave this island. Sam and Jonah take her side, and Lara makes a decision. The tomb could hold the key to the storms, Lara has to see for herself. She tells Sam as much when she questions where she’s going. 

“Once we’re ready to leave, we’re leaving. Whether you’re back or not,” Reyes tells her without even looking at her.

She hears Sam sigh loudly and moves to look up at her properly. “I won’t leave without you,” she says sincerely. 

They share one last look, and Lara knows she should say something—she doesn’t think she had an actual conversation with her since she’d gotten back from the Endurance—but nothing feels quite right, not with the way Sam stares up radiating an exorbitant amount of faith in her she doesn’t think she deserves. 

So Lara does what she does best, walks away in search of answers to another question. 

———— 

_If I'm going to get to the ritual chamber in that monastery, we need to fix that boat. I don't know how I'm going to convince the others to take it inland, rather than off this island, but I have to find a way. Reyes won't be easy. She wants to get back to her daughter, and she's in pain over Roth. We all are._

_I still don't know exactly why Mathias wanted Sam in the first place, but it doesn't matter. She's back with us now; she's safe._

———— 

They’re under attack. Lara hears gunshots through the radio and Reyes tells her that they need help and— _shit_ , just how long had she been gone? Long enough, apparently, for the Solarii to attack them.

No, no one else is going to die on her watch.

She’d found the tomb easily enough, found the note the general had hidden in his sword. She doesn’t completely understand it all, but she knows it has to do with the Sun Queen, _a soul in a decaying body,_ the body in the ritual chamber _._ That’s what controls the storms. 

But first, she needs to save her friends, needs to save _Sam_. 

More gunshots, Reyes screaming for help.

She reaches the beach, and she runs towards an injured Reyes, her eyes frantically searching for the others.

“There’s no sign of them,” Jonah pants, running up to them.

_No._

“What happened?”

“During the attack, Whitman took Sam and they disappeared.”

 _Whitman._ That _slimy_ bastard; she’ll kill him. 

“He’s taken her back to Mathias,” Lara spits out, pure rage threatening to burst through her skin. Reyes murmurs something about how they should’ve listened and Lara bites back an angry, ‘ _you should’ve.’_ Instead, she balls up her fists and breaths out, “fuck!”

She pleads with Reyes to listen to her, to _trust_ her, and there’s something in Reyes that shifts. Lara isn’t sure what, maybe the grief had finally molded into something else, maybe she was finally beginning to see just how _strange_ this island is, but Lara doesn’t care what it is—all she can think about is getting Sam to safety and getting them all off this island, away from Yamatai once and for all. 

Reyes relents, with a bit of help from Jonah, and the three get preparing the boat for the ride inland. 

They’ll pay. Mathias will pay. Lara will make sure of it. 

Reyes asks her about her plan, and Lara tells them what she’d found out—the dead body of an ancient Sun Queen and how her rage fuels the storm. Reyes asks what Sam has to do with all of it and Lara’s breath hitches at the question. 

She’s not sure why Mathias wants Sam, and that’s what scares her the most.

———— 

_The prayer I found on that General talked about a soul in a decaying body being the cause of the storms. I know he must be talking about the last Sun Queen, but I don't understand what Himiko has to do with this. She was the first Queen. Somehow Mathias thinks Sam's connected. And that can't be good. Damn you Whitman! You'll do anything for a story._

_I know the answer is inside that ritual chamber, but getting to it won't be easy. The Stormguard are devoted to guarding it. I know I have to do this, but I'm so scared of what I'm going to find in there._

———— 

“Sam! She’s still alive…” she mutters to herself, watching closely as she spots Whitman, Mathias, and Sam walk by below her. “...and the good doctor. What the hell are you doing Whitman?”

She watches as Mathias and Whitman exchange a few words—Lara isn’t close enough to hear the details. Mathias has a tight grip on Sam’s arm and her hands are tied behind her back. Her teeth grinds as she takes in the new set of clothes she’s donning, a ceremonial white dress and a flower crown perched atop her head. 

He’s performing some type of ritual with her, but what?

Her eyes are so focused on Sam, she almost misses it when Whitman steps away from them—towards the stormguard.

_Oh no._

“What is he doing?” Lara whispers in horror. 

_Oh no._

She knows what’s about to happen—it doesn’t exactly take an archeology degree to figure out— but she can’t seem to tear her eyes away. The stormguard are relentless and tear him apart in seconds, their spears piercing into him and ending his life quickly. He was awful, but Lara doesn’t know if he deserved a death like that. 

Mathias takes advantage of the distracted stormguard, grabs Sam and runs across the bridge. 

“Lara!” Sam screams when she catches her eye.

Lara jumps down quickly, tries to catch up to them, but a heavy gust of wind stops her and tears the bridge apart.

“Lara!” she screams again.

“Sam!”

She tries to fight it. She has to get to her.

“LARA!”

“SAM!”

They’re gone, but Lara is more determined than ever.

 _Nothing_ is going to stop her from getting to Sam. 

———— 

She gets inside the ritual chamber, puts the pieces together. Everything Mathias has said, all those murals, transferring souls, the prayer left behind by the general.

First and last.

Himiko.

“Oh god, and now you want Sam.”

The realization washes over her and it all makes sense. Mathias is going to transfer Himiko’s soul into Sam. _That’s_ why he needs her.

“Well, you’re not getting her.”

Sam, a vessel for the Queen’s soul.

Not if Lara had anything to say about it.

———— 

“No, no please...” Sam struggles against Mathias’ grip, more terrified than she’d ever seen her. “Lara!’

“Why are you doing this Mathias?” Lara aims her bow at him, eyes searching for any kind of opening.

“Do you think that you're the hero, Lara?” he mocks. “Everything I've done I did to survive. How many lives have you taken to do the same?”

Her grip tightens. _That’s different_ , she wants to scream, _we’re not the same_. 

“There are no heroes here, only survivors.”

She tries to shake him off, edge closer, eyes drifting every once in a while to look at Sam, to reassure her that Lara would get them out of this. “Himiko’s dangerous, Mathias. She’s angry, she’s vengeful, and she has real power.”

“A mere mortal for a queen? A good trade for our freedom, I'd say.”

 _Sam is not a_ _mere mortal,_ Lara thinks bitterly. Sam is the most important person in her life. 

The storm rages, and Mathias gets away with her again, but Lara is quicker this time—more determined than ever.

He can’t have Sam, Himiko won’t take Sam.

Sam, the best person she’s ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Sam, the person she loves most.

———— 

“Sam!” she screams, the beginnings of the ritual already taking place. There’s too much wind, and her arrow is blown off course.

She loves her.

“Oh god, I have to get to her!” 

Their screams pierce her ears and fuel her fury. She can’t tell if those sounds are Sam or Himiko.

She loves her. 

Solarii advance towards her, and she shoots them down with no hesitation, with a precision she didn’t know she had, a coldness that burns through her. 

“You won’t stop me, you bastards! Get the hell out of my way!”

She loves her. 

“No, Mathias! Stop! Don’t hurt her!”

She loves her.

The stormguard try to stop her next, and they almost do, but she’s stronger this time—smarter. 

She loves her.

Mathias is the last thing between her and Sam. He pins her down, determined. He’s so close, he’s desperate. He’s stronger than her, but he also underestimates her, makes a silly mistake that lets her take the upper hand, and she’s staring him down with two pistols in her hands.

He tries to run at her one last time.

She loves her.

But she’s a Croft, after all.

She loves her.

———— 

She’s stopped the ritual—she thinks, hopeful that Himiko’s body exploding is a clear indicator that she’s gone from their lives for good. . 

“Sam...Oh Sam, thank god.”

She rolls her over and cradles her in her arms, relief flooding through her. 

“Ugh...wha?” Sam is barely conscious, looks up at her through half-lidded eyes. “Lara? What’s happening?” She tries to sit up, but falls back against Lara’s arm and feels herself start to fade back into unconsciousness. 

“Shhh...shhh...I’m here.” She pulls her closer, grabs her hand as Sam groans in pain, and tries to be as gentle as possible. “You’re safe now. It’s okay…”

“You saved me, I knew you would,” she grins weakly up at her, her eyes finally open and Lara feels like her heart is about to burst.

“I made you a promise. Let’s get you home.” Lara can’t tear her eyes away from the sight. Sam is alive, Mathias is dead, and the storms? 

The sun breaks through the clouds and it’s almost perfect the way it hits them.

She’s sure the storms won’t be a problem anymore.

———— 

Sam tries to get up on her own, but she struggles to even sit up. Lara insists on carrying her the rest of the way down. As much as she aches, her body can rest another day. Sam isn’t in a position to argue when Lara places her hands underneath her and easily lifts her up into her arms.

“You sure know how to take care of a girl,” Sam jokes, her voice still weak.

Lara laughs, leftover adrenaline still pumping through her body. There’s a part of her still on alert, still looking over her shoulder for the stormguard or the Solarii. 

“Hey,” Sam calls out to her, a shaky hand reaching up to cup her face. “It’s over,” she says softly, “I can feel it. It’s over.”

“I know,” Lara breaths, leaning into the touch. How is it that even after all that, Sam is the one that calms her? That brings her down to reality? That eases her into a pleasant rhythm? “It’s just a little hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it,” Sam grins, her hand falling back down. She starts to drift off, her eyes struggling to stay open, and she feels her heart stutter.

She loves her.

“I love you,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I almost lost you, and I just,” she licks her lips, “I needed you to know that.”

Sam opens her eyes again, filled with a curious glint mixed in with exhaustion.. “I love you too, sweetie.”

She grins, happy, but it doesn’t feel quite right. For once, it’s a conversation that can wait another day, that can be shelved until they’ve healed from all that’s happened—a day where Sam isn’t being carried down a mountain and nearly passing out in her arms.

Sam feels so fragile, feels like if she holds her any tighter then she’ll break into pieces and fall through her arms right then and there. 

“Close your eyes, get some rest,” Lara chides. “You look exhausted.”

“And you aren’t?” she scoffs.

“That’s different. You...you just…”

The mood shifts into something darker and neither of them know how to address it. 

“I know, Lara,” is all Sam says, and they don’t.

“I’ve got you,” Lara tells her again, shifts her slightly in her arms to get a better grip. “Just...close your eyes.”

Sam only hums before acquiescing, letting her eyes shut and leaning her head against Lara’s chest. 

“When we get home, you know what you’re going to do, Lara?” she mumbles.

“What?”

“Take a long shower,” Sam grins, eyes still closed. Lara rolls her eyes anyway.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and then eat the best meal you’ve ever had.”

“And after that?”

“After that, you’re going to go to your room and go sleep for an entire week.”

Lara smiles down softly at her friend, and Sam opens her eyes just in time to see it. “And will you be there with me?”

There are stars in her eyes.

“Whatever you want, Lara.”

———— 

_I’ve been so blind, so naive. For years I resented my father, doubted him like the rest. But he was right about so much. I just wish I could tell him that now. There are so many mysteries that I once dismissed as mere stories, but the line between our myths and truth is fragile and blurry._

_I need to find answers. I must understand._

———— 

“I’m not going home,” she whispers to herself as the captain of the ship walks away. 

She looks over at Sam, Jonah, and Reyes engaged in a deep conversation about all the things they can’t wait to get back to. She smiles, finally feeling a sense of safety start to settle around her. They’re going home, really going home.

Only, Lara doesn’t want to. Not really, anyway. 

Everything has changed, the world feels like a different place now. Lara never really had much of a sense of purpose, but now? Now she finally sees what her father had been obsessed with all his life, the allure of, not just the unknown, but the mix of myths and truths and how, more often than not, they blended together. 

She wants to know everything, wants to cling into the piece of her father she had so readily discarded so many years ago in shame. 

Home hasn’t felt like home in a long time. And with Roth gone, there’s even less of a reason to settle into it. 

She glances back at Sam, looking more and more like herself with every passing minute, and there’s a pang in her heart. Sam is the closest anyone has ever felt like home. She tears her eyes away and shuts them tightly. 

Sam is her best friend. She’s never going to let anything bad happen to her again. She hadn’t realized the lengths she was willing to go through for her, but if Yamatai had shown her anything, it was that she’d die for her, and the intensity of that thought scares her more than it should. 

She’ll go back for now, rest up and begin to research everything she dismissed. Her mind is set, her body craving another adventure already. 

She’s a Croft, after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next two chapters will obviously be retellings of RotTR and SottR, but will hopefully not be as long as this one. I just felt like Yamatai had a lot of growth for Lara and there was little I felt like I could cut out without compromising her growth. There's also significantly less Sam in the next two games so, there's that. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
